


She Could Destroy Them

by Clarafication



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-05-26 10:29:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 26
Words: 30,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6235075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clarafication/pseuds/Clarafication
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Looking from the outside, Kate Burnett is a normal girl. She has a crush on her brother's best friend, dreams for the future, and a wonderful family. But when she's thrown into a world of gods and monsters, and falls for a certain son of Hades, she finds out that her world, and she herself, are far less simple than she thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was only February, but it felt like spring in the way it sometimes does when the sun shines warm on your hair and the sky burns sapphire blue. Tony and I sat on the limp, brownish grass. I was petting Sally, our husky with one foot and trying to french braid his short, black hair when he looked up at me, shaking the plait loose. “Don’t you wish we could get out of here?”

“Get out of here how?” I asked my brother. He twirled a blade of grass between his fingers and his brown-green eyes looked thoughtful. With his tan skin and athletic figure, he was much taller than me, and two years older. The kids in his class thought he was Hispanic until they realized he was related to me: Katelyn Burnett, the pale, freckly sixth grader with that mane of red hair and weird, dark blue eyes.  
That was years ago, and now Tony belonged to a small homeschool group that met once a week. I was at Lewis and Clark, the tiny high school in town, with an entire population about half the size of the freshman class at the main high school. I missed Anthony during the day, but these walks to the park with Sally made up for it. 

“Oh, you know,” Tony said. “A mystery to solve would be nice. Or one of us could even get kidnapped. Anything, I guess.”  
I smiled that he included me in his musings. “So long as you’re the one who gets kidnapped,” I joked. But I knew what he meant. Our tiny town in the middle of Oregon was sorely lacking any kind of adventure.

“So, I’ll get kidnapped, and you’ll come after my captors with what? A book?” My brother hardly ever teased me for my bookworm tendencies, and today I knew it was a friendly sort of teasing.

“With my epic ninja skills, of course!” He smiled, and I laughed, and he grabbed the dog’s leash and we headed home.

“Okay, okay, focus!” I scolded myself. I closed the YouTube tab on my laptop screen and clicked on the online algebra book. My school gave both a math and Math Theory class, a homework pile which induced more than a few headaches during the week. I rubbed my temples, put my iPod on shuffle, and forced myself to struggle through the last six problems.

I glanced at the clock. “Emily, Mom says you can come down now!”

Immediately, little footsteps began to patter above me and then I heard her come down the stairs. I went to the hall and stepped into a Kodak moment.  
Emmy, five years old and the most adorable thing you’ve ever seen, stood on the second step to the bottom. She held her teddy bear by the foot with one hand and rubbed an eye with the other.

I picked her up and spun. Her bright blond hair swung by her shoulders, and her eyes were a deep, chocolate brown. Neither of us looked like Silas, who had brown hair and blue eyes, or Eliza, who more resembled Tony than any of the rest of us. “How was your nap?”

“Fine.”

“Did you sleep at all?”

My little sister nodded earnestly. “Where’s Mama?” she asked.

“She went on a long run. She’ll be back in forty-five minutes, she said.”

“How long is that?”

“Two VeggieTales episodes,” I explained, grinning. 

“Ooohhh,” Emily said, “where are the boys?”

“Tony went to go get groceries, and Silas’s at the park.” I sighed. Tony had offered to take me with him, but I’d opted to finish my homework before youth group. Plus, we couldn’t leave Emmy alone.

I set Emily down on the kitchen floor and got her a glass of milk. “So, goosie. It’s just us chickens. What’ll it be for supper, hm?”

“Quesadillas!” She pronounced it ‘kay-sa-dill-ahs’ like she always did, and I ruffled her hair like I always did.

I put on some music and danced around the kitchen, getting out ingredients while Emily set herself up with a puzzle. I chuckled to imagine how ridiculous I must look, wearing my dad’s huge sweatshirt that smelled like coffee and my bright tie-dyed shorts, using a salt shaker as a microphone. But the window blinds were closed, and my little sister was used to my antics, so I didn’t care.

I was in the middle of unloading the dishwasher, Emily sitting at the table with a quesadilla and some hastily sliced apples when I heard a knock on the door. I grinned. Maybe it was Peter on his way back from track practice. He usually stopped by on the way to his house for a few minutes of conversation. He was my brother’s friend, but Tony tended to be gone when Peter came around, so I was the one who made small talk in the doorway. I wondered sometimes if Paul came when my brother was out on purpose.

I looked in the hallway mirror and fixed my hair, grasping the handle for a moment, ready to say “hey, stranger,” which always made him smile, but when I opened the door it wasn’t Peter after all. Instead, an elderly man stood on my doorstep.

His skin was so pale it looked a transparent gray, spotted with age. He had to be two feet taller than me, but his place at the foot of the steps put our eyes at about the same level. His were colorless, almost the same grey as his complexion. His clothes were completely grey, so I could hardly tell fabric from skin. He smelled strongly of smoke. 

I smiled hesitantly. My mom told me to be polite to my elders, but old people always made me nervous, with their fragile hands I had to shake and their advice that made me squirm. And he was staring intently at me, his head slightly tilted.

I got ready to close the door at a moment’s notice. “Can I help you, sir?”

He said nothing, just tilted his head some more to the side and then I start to realize things. Like the fact that his face wasn’t an old man’s anymore, but a muzzle, with burning red eyes set low above it. Like how the thing was towering over me on muscular legs, on all fours, like a dog. How it made a noise like a growl and threw itself at the doorway. I slammed the door shut and clicked the lock with trembling fingers.

I heard a whimper and I gasped. Emily stood behind me, her chubby hands covering her eyes. I dropped to a crouch and hugged her, gathering her into my arms like I had a million times when nightmares scared her down to my room or a knee scrape pushed tears onto those precious cheeks.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s fine. You’re fine, I’m fine, we’re fine. Anthony is going to come home soon, and Silas is probably on his way home from the park, and then we can play hide-and-seek, okay? You can be on my team if you want,” I mumbled into her hair. Knowing she needed me helped me keep my cool. She was still shaking and I hoisted her onto my hip and carried her to my room, locking my door behind us. 

We crouched on the floor of my bedroom for what felt like hours, until Emily shifted to walk to the door. There were new sounds of commotion outside, shouts and clangs and I could hardly imagine what was going on. I glanced at Emily. “Lock yourself in,” I said. “I’m going to go take a look.”

She grabbed my legs. “No!” Tears started to rush again, and I sighed.

I kept my tone light, as though nothing was wrong at all. “It’s okay, honey, I’ll be back in three seconds. I’m just going to peek through the mail slot, that’s all.”

I gently pushed her back into my room and waited until I heard her click the lock. Then I tiptoed into the living room, to the big window facing our front yard. And what I saw almost made me scream again.


	2. Chapter 2

My front yard holds so many memories. My brothers and I used to play ‘front yard baseball’ with ‘bases’ on the four corners of the yard. We met our dog, Sally, as a clumsy puppy on that grass. 

One time my cat dragged a baby bat up into the tree and it fell onto Tony’s head. Seven years of my family’s games and puzzles and picnics can be recalled by just stepping out into the front yard.

But now it looked wrong, like a battlefield. Five teenagers I didn’t know stood on one side of the brick path, and that horrible-- thing crouched on the other. The kids were an odd jumble of t-shirts and swords, blue jeans and shields. One girl, with jet black hair, was wearing a skirt and leggings and held a javelin in her left hand. 

As I stood, shocked and frozen by the window, a blond girl ran forward to jab at the beast, but her blade passed through the thing like it was made of smoke. It batted at her and she flew backward, landing in the bushes in front of the window. One of the boys, with red hair like mine, ran to help her and saw me. His bright blue eyes grew wide, and he turned to his friends. His mouth moved and he pointed at me through the glass. 

The black-haired girl motioned for him to join the battle, and came over to look through the glass and frown. I was reminded of a zoo animal, sitting motionless and watching visitors come to stare, wide-mouthed and tap the glass. 

The black-haired girl pointed toward the front door, and I ran to the mail slot. Her dark eyes appeared and she asked in a calm voice, “who are you?”

“Kate.”

“And you’re a half-blood? The message we got said the resident of this house was ready to be taken to camp.”

“What?”

Her eyes widened as another growl echoed through the neighborhood. “Is there anybody else in the house with you?”

“Yeah, my baby sister. Why?”

She turned to look at her companions and when her gaze came back to me she looked troubled. “Tell your sister to stay in the house--” she began.

“She locked herself in my room.”

“Good.” The girl hesitated, biting her lip. Then her features smoothed, as if she had come to a decision. “And we need you to come outside.”

“You’re insane,” I announced, maybe a bit more loudly than necessary.

The redhead boy’s face came into my vision, pushing the girl’s head out of the way long enough to say, “of course we are! How else did you think we’ve stayed alive this long?”

The black-haired girl muttered something and pushed him out of the way. “Just trust us,” she said. “We’ve done this before.” And with that, she was gone.

I stayed there, squatting with my eyes level to the mail slot, my thoughts buzzing. What was going on? What about Emily? What was that thing? Who were they? What camp were they talking   
about? 

I raced to my room to yell, “stay in there!” to Emily. I’m insane, too, I thought as I turned off the stove (safety first!), impulsively grabbed the short, sharp knife Mom used for cutting vegetables, tucked it in my sleeve, and opened the door.

Without a pane of glass between me and the battle, the teenagers’ fighting looked far more desperate. A buff, blond guy was crouched over the blond girl, muttering. The redhead boy and the black-haired leader were in a huddle, eyeing the beast. Their foreheads were tense, their words hushed. 

Another girl stood between the two pairs. Her hair was brown, and her olive skin was perfectly smooth. She stood with her hands folded at her waist, and at the moment seemed the safest to approach. I joined her at the edge of the teenagers’ territory, watching the beast growl and paw at the ground. I frowned, imagining what my mother was going to do when she saw the state of the yard. She should be home sometime soon, I realized. What would happen then? I pushed the thought out of my head and asked the brown-haired girl, “so what’s your name? And what is that thing?”

She turned to me, not startled at all. “Angela. And we have no idea,” she said. 

“Your friend said you’d done this before!”

“We have. We’ve fought hundreds of monsters, and known them all by name. But this--” she gestured toward the grey dog with a sweep of her arm. She frowned, and she sounded frustrated. “--we’ve never seen anything like this.”

I nodded, not able to manage doing much else. Finally I stammered, “why did your friend have me come outside?”

She frowned. “Monique’s smart. If you’d been alone in the house, she would’ve had you stay inside at all costs. But since there’s a little kid involved, the safest thing for both of you is her in there   
and you out here with us.”

“Why?” I struggled to understand her perspective. I should be with my sister, not as far away as possible. 

She gave me a look, and her expression softened. “Because the monster came after you.” 

I blinked. “What do you mean? That I’m putting my sister in danger? Do you know how-”

She held her hands up in an ‘I am innocent!’ way, and almost smiled. “Let me rephrase that. The--”

But Angela didn’t get to explain. The monster, seeming to have grown bored, caught sight of me. It growled and advanced, stepping over the brick path. George was in front of me in two seconds, his blade drawn and his eyes strangely serious. “Don’t you know it’s wrong to hit a girl?” I frowned, confused until I realized the words were aimed at the monster, who snarled and retreated. But not far.

“Hey, Mon, how’s it going?” George risked a look back at the girl Monique, who was fumbling in her backpack.

“So, what happens now?” I asked Angela. 

She stared straight ahead as she spoke, “well, whatever plan she’s cooking up--” she nodded at the darker-haired girl “--works, we get away and the minimum amount of people die.”

“And if it doesn’t work? What if she doesn’t have a plan?”

“Then we all die.”

Jack, who had stood and come to stand behind us, turned and called to the leader, “Monique? What are these kids saying about you not having a plan?”

“Working on it, Jack,” she fired back, annoyed. “Got it!” she shouted. She held up a tiny scrap of paper, and when George saw it he relaxed a bit. “Well, what are you waiting for,” he asked her.

She didn’t answer, just started writing feverishly. 

I leaned toward Angela and muttered, “sending a messenger pigeon for help?” 

She sniggered. “Let’s hope not.” I started to laugh far harder than I would have, had the situation not been completely un-laugh-worthy. Soon the both of us were cracking up, our stomachs cramping and giggles hysterical. Both of the boys looked at us like we were crazy, and I snorted, and Angela laughed harder.

“Okay, George!” Monique’s voice called from behind us. We looked back just in time to see the black-haired girl stick the piece of paper to her shirt and right before the dog swung his skeletal head around to face her, she disappeared and was replaced by a small deer.

I watched, stunned, as Monique the Deer darted back and forth, going in to snap at his ear or fore paw, then out of reach before the monster could retaliate. She was beautiful and cunning, until she tripped. On a banana peel that lay on the sidewalk. For the tiniest moment I forgot that that was Monique, and I briefly wished for a camera. That video would be totally AFV-worthy.

The deer went down and the dog clamped his jaws onto her shoulder. I heard a sickening crunch, and a piece of paper fell off the doe’s white chest. Monique, in human form again, crumpled to the ground and cried out in pain. “Monique!” Jack yelled, and sprinted over to the fallen girl. The monster turned on the boy and growled.

Jack reached the paper before the monster did. He backed away, looking at it, then gasped. “George, toss me a pen!”

The redhead was trying to drag Monique away from the dog, and yelled back, “Why the-- why would I have a pen?!!”

Jack dug through his pockets. “You said that you always--ever since you thought you saw Britney Spears walking down the street and-- found one!” He scribbled on the piece of paper, then ran over to Angela and I. She handed it to (of all people) me and said, “put it on! Hurry!”

Surprised, I looked at the paper. I was disappointed to see it was one of those ‘Hello, my name is:’ stickers. In the empty space, almost illegible writing spelled out Monique Amber. “What the heck?!!” I exclaimed, but Jack gasped, “no time!” and stuck the sticker to the front of my shirt.

I felt the change almost instantly. My hair grew thin and straight. The muscles on my arms bulged and suddenly, I looked at my hands and they were far browner than my normal pinkish hue. “I’m--” But I didn’t finish, because my voice wasn’t mine. "I'm Monique."


	3. Chapter 3

Jack nodded. “Yeah, yeah, it’s amazing. Now--”

I interrupted him, pointed a thumb at myself. I was about to sound stupid and selfish and heartless, but at the moment I didn’t care. “What happened to ‘plan:protect Katelyn and Emily’?”  
Sure enough, Jack glared. “Yeah,” he growled, “but my friend is hurt, and we're going to save her." He pushed me toward the monster. "And you're the distraction."

Looking back at it, it was a brilliant, if half-baked, plan. The hellhound was immediately confused by the two dark-skinned girls, one on the ground and one about to charge him. Or, that’s how Jack wished it was, I’m sure. In reality, he had to force me toward the monster and even then I hardly “charged”. More like cowered in terror. 

I looked closer at the beast. I hadn’t had the opportunity to actually study him. He was huge, but almost skeletal in his thinness. He reminded me of the two Great Danes from the house across the street, who you could see lazing around on the grass any summer’s day. Only those dogs, who towered over their owners’ kids, could be puppies compared to this brute. I was tempted to laugh, but the chuckle was scared out of me by another growl and Jack shouting, “keep him occupied!” So I shook all thoughts out of my head, accepted that I was going completely crazy, and tried to get the thing’s attention. My legs shook in Monique’s combat boots. 

I ran into a problem pretty quickly. As soon as the dog noticed that my heart wasn’t in it, he stopped bugging me and wandered off to find another target. Which would’ve been fine, if his next target hadn’t been Angela. 

I don't know why, but in the short time I'd known these five, Angela was the one I'd decided to trust. She hadn’t looked at me like I was a bomb that was just waiting to blow up at any moment, or a stupid kid who was only there because she'd brought a monster to kill them all.

She was caring for the blond girl, who'd sat up, but still looked pretty shaky. Angela was faced away from the fight, and had no idea that the monster was only a few feet away.

I knew I couldn't do anything. The knife I had grabbed was weaker than a Nerf sword compared to the weapons Jack, Angela, and George were carrying. But I got it out of my belt anyway, and ran between the dog and my friends-- I just then realized that I considered them my friends. 

I pointed away, down the street, and glared at the beast. When I spoke, my voice echoed through the neighborhood, sounding much braver than I felt. I don't know what I planned to say, but it was definitely not what came out. 

"Go. Away," I said in a firm voice, as if I were talking to an annoying pet or a troublesome little sibling.

I heard George mutter behind me, "what is she doing?" Then the dog tilted his head.

His snout shrunk into a long nose. The fur disappeared, and in a few seconds I was facing the tall, completely grey man from earlier today. He tilted his head, and gave me a long look. Then, slowly, he turned the direction I had pointed and walked away. I shuddered, and all six of us watched the man stroll down the street, around the corner, and out of sight.

I took a deep breath, then turned to look back at the others. Their expressions ranged from bewilderment to amazement to indignation. Monique, standing now with her arms crossed, studied me with stormy eyes. George’s jaw had dropped almost to his toes, and Angela’s eyes were wide, her mouth slightly less agape than the boy’s beside her.

“What?” I asked, and was jarred again by hearing Monique’s voice come out of my mouth. 

Sick of the confusion, I took off the nametag, and felt my hair frizz and my arms droop with fatigue. It took under two seconds for me to go from Monique to Katelyn again, still wearing my dad’s sweater. George walked over to me, stopping just out of my reach. “How did you do that?” he whispered.

I didn’t want them to see me cry, and to disguise the choked sob that escaped me, I ran inside and knocked frantically on my door. For a terrifying moment there was nothing, then I heard the lock click and pulled Emily up into my arms. 

Millions of excuses flashed through my head. This was a dream. That was the only reasonable explanation. I was about to wake up, laying on the floor and helping Emily with her puzzle. Anthony would be home soon, and Silas would try to steal my phone, and Dad would come in with I had dozed off-- right, that was it. God, that’s cliche.

But even that couldn’t fully satisfy my brain. I had seen all that. I--I had done some of it.

I didn’t go outside, not sure if I could face them again, not sure if I could face anything. But in a few minutes, Angela came into my house, glancing around at my mother’s carefully decorated living room. She looked down from the collage of color-by-number paintings on the wall, and picked up my brother’s guitar. “Who plays?” she asked.

“Tony,” I said. She raised an eyebrow, and I bit my lip. “My brother,” I said. “He’s getting groceries. He should be back any minute.”

“So is he a half-blood, too?” she asked.

I looked at her. “A what? Is that some sort of racist--”

She shook her head. “Never mind,” she said. I nodded and carried Emily into the kitchen. Sitting her on the counter, I put the lid on the beans and carried the container to the fridge. Angela watched me for a minute, then she picked up the jug of milk off the counter and put that in the fridge, too. 

I’m not OCD or anything, but when I’m stressed I default to chores. Having something to do that required moving around and not much brain power helped me think. My parents used to joke that all they had to do was leave me in the kitchen and argue for a while, and the chores would be done in ten minutes. Once, when my dad was lecturing Anthony about his bad attitude, I cleaned the entire kitchen and started dinner. 

So Angela and I finished unloading and loading the dishwasher. Without one word, I stood by the sink and rinsed dishes while she took them from me to put them in. She arranged them better than I ever did, I noticed, and I was reminded of my mom.

After a while Angela started to talk. She didn’t say anything about the grey dog, or George or me. She told me about her dad, and her brothers. She recounted a funny story about her dog shaking hands with a visitor without being told. She told me about her life with her family, when she was little.

“Then I was attacked by a hellhound,” she said in a slower voice, taking a pan out of my wet hands. “George was my satyr, and he tried to protect me. Together, we drove it away and got to camp. Monique had been there a year already. Jill, the blond girl, she came the next year.”

I didn’t understand a word she said, but I listened to her even voice and calmed a little bit. I cut an apple for Emily and offered Angela a slice. She took it and kept talking.

She started to explain about the ‘camp’. Kids went there, she said, who were special. The children of gods. She talked about Athena and Hades. She said that Jill was a daughter of Aphrodite, and Monique’s dad was Apollo. I recognized the names from stories in one of our old literature books, about the Greek gods, but I didn’t think much of it. She said Camp Half-Blood, as it was called, was where demigods (“the children of one god and one human,” explained Angela) went to train to survive. 

The dishes were done, the counters washed, and I had started to tune back in when Angela said, “you’d like the archery range, I think.”

“Wait, what? Since when am I going to this camp?”

She frowned. “Have you been listening to anything I’ve been saying?”

“Only sort of,” I admitted.

She groaned and started over, speaking slowly. “Homes are set up in little towns, where people take care of potential half-bloods until they’re old enough to go to camp. It’s a system to try and keep the kids safe at a younger age. It’s often hard to tell, and most of the time they might be grandchildren of a demigod, or even just a normal kid. Most of the time it’s a false alarm.” 

She straightened a magnet on the fridge. “When the camp gets a message from one of these homes,” she continued, “they send out a team to collect the half-blood. Sometimes they’re successful. They get the kid, and take them to camp before a monster finds them. It’s really nice when this happens, but it doesn’t always happen. In most cases, like this one, we get there too late and a monster has already arrived.”

She looked at me warily. “But I have never seen anything like what just happened. Usually the person we’re trying to rescue cowers in a corner, or runs away.”

“So what are you saying?” I asked, still confused.

She sighed exasperation. “Are you always this clueless?”

“No,” I said, defensively, I’ll admit. “You should meet Anthony. He’s the real slow one.” Thinking of Tony gives me an idea, and part of what she’s saying starts to click. “So, is Tony the person you came looking for?”

She shook her head. “No. We got a call about a girl. We know that much.” 

“But--”

“And what you just did now is total confirmation. You have to come with us.”

I blinked. “But it’s not me! I’m not the kid of a god, which is crazy anyway. I have a mom and dad! I have a family.”

“Who you look nothing like, right?”

I stared at her. 

“And weird things have been going on around you ever since you were little? You have ADHD or dyslexia?”

Here I could get her. “Neither,” I protested.

“Hm. Most do. But the rest of my points still stand. You were protected ever since you were little from the bad stuff, so it’s not as obvious to you as to us.” Was I crazy, or did she sound jealous? 

“But that doesn’t make it not true,” Angela continued. She gave me a look that managed to be both firm and apologetic. “You’re a half-blood, and now that they know you are, accepting it isn't really an option.”


	4. Chapter 4

“You’re a half-blood, and now that they know you are, accepting it isn't really an option.”

Angela looked regretful, as though she didn’t want the words to be true. I could tell she spoke from experience, and for the first moment I believed that maybe what she said was true. 

It was insane. Kids of gods and humans? Monsters? Olympic gods and things of myth in the world-- “We would have noticed,” I realized. “If those things were in the real world, we would have noticed,” I repeated.

Angela smiled grimly, pulling herself up to sit by Emily on the counter. I joined them, my head resting on the glass cupboard doors. “Yeah, that’s the hardest part. Makes it a bit difficult to prove it.” She continued to explain about the Mist. It obscured all the ‘unexplainable’ happenings of the real world from mortals’ eyes. “One reason why you might not have seen strange things. Even though you’re one of us, it affects ignorant half-bloods too.”

“I’m not ignorant!”

“Yeah, not anymore.” Her expression went serious, and she leaned toward me. “You get it, though, don’t you? Why you had to leave Emily in the house, and why you have to leave now.”

I bit my lip. “Yeah, I get it. If what you say is true--”

“--Which it is,” Angela insisted. “You’ll see when you get to camp.”

“If what you say is true,” I repeated, “then I’m just putting my family in more danger.” I looked at Angela. “What about Anthony? Or Silas or Liza? Are any of them-- like you say I am?”

She pursed her lips. “We don’t know until we get a call. Sometimes the people who set up the homes take in a few kids to further disguise the actual half-bloods. Maybe these are your siblings.”

“But-- they might be like me, right? I mean, if I’m what you say I am.” I realized I was trying to sound like I didn’t believe her, but my attempts seemed weak, even to my own ears. Did I actually  
believe this crazy story?

Angela frowned and tickled Emily’s foot absently. My baby sister squealed happily, and Angela managed a half smile. “Maybe,” she said, drawing the word long. “But your brother definitely isn’t.”

I looked at her.

“The one that’s older than you. We get calls about half-blood potentials between the ages of twelve and fourteen. Your brother’s still here, so--”

By this time my head was in my hands. “Yeah, yeah. He can’t be like me.” 

Ever since I was old enough to walk, Anthony and I had done things at the same time. We’d gone everywhere together. When Silas got old enough to want to have his brother to himself, Tony and I still spent hours in his room or mine, talking the night away. Even when Dad let him read a book series, but not me, Anthony read chapters to me until I was allowed. And now... “He’s gonna hate me for leaving without him,” I told Angela, frustrated to find myself crying.

“Hey, it’s okay.” The other girl put her hand on my shoulder, her eyes softened. “Most campers go home for the school year. Maybe you could come back here.”

“But they aren’t my family. They’re not my parents! He’s--” I choked on a sob. I imagined what a wreck I looked to Angela, tear-streaked face and huge sweater. I hadn’t even put on makeup today. “He’s not my brother,” I forced out.

Angela nodded, and Emily gave me a hug. I squeezed her hand, and looked at the ceiling to dry out my eyes. “Hey, listen,” Angela said, “I know your world is kind of falling apart right now. I should know-- mine did too, but it’s not all bad. Even if the Burnetts aren’t blood related to you, they still raised you. You still grew up with Tony and Silas and the others. You’re still family, just as much as if you were born that way.”

“What if some, or even one of them are like me? Will you take them away, too?”

She shook her head. “We don’t recruit little kids from the safe places. If they’re safe, and ignorant, it’s just as well. There’s no need to take them before they can handle it.”

“Oh.”

“You’re disappointed you won’t be with your family, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.” I bit my lip.

“Well, it’s not like you’re going into a convent. You can still have friends at camp, and they’ll all be like you. You’ll be in one big family.” She didn’t.

I glared at her. “Do you know how freaking cliche that sounds?”

She laughed. “Yeah, I know. I get way too sappy when I’m recruiting.”

I cracked a smile and she bumped my shoulder. “Come on,” she said, “we should get going.”

Emily perked up. “Are we going somewhere, Katy?” she asked me. I looked at Angela and frowned. 

She bit her lip, her forehead bunched. “Yeah, I see your point,” she said. “We can’t just leave her here. I don’t know what you did to make that thing go away--”

“I just told it to.”

“Yeah, sure. Anyway, we can’t be sure it won’t come back. I don’t think it would hurt her, but still--”

I got an idea. “My little brother is at the park. We could leave her with him and warn him not to come home right away.”

Angela nodded, her face serious again. “And we’re going to have to tell Mrs. Burnett.”

“You can call her my mom,” I said. “After all, she brought me up.”

Angela smiled and led the way out of the house.

As soon as Emily saw the other kids, she hid behind me, clinging to my leg as if it was the only thing that was keeping her from running inside.

I didn’t blame her; I felt like hiding behind a big, safe person too. The whole world looked different, from the blue sky to George’s sneakers. How was I supposed to be sure anything around me was real?

The other teenagers looked-- I searched for the word. Apprehensive. Jack looked at the sky, and George looked at his shoes. Jill’s gaze went everywhere: me and Emily for the barest moment, the grass, the car across the street, her fingernails. Only Monique looked me straight in the eye when I walked out the front door. Her gaze was cold and calculating.

Angela walked in front of me and told Monique, “we need to take the little girl to the park across the street. Her brother’s there.”

Monique nodded. “Okay,” she said, “and then we need to get out of here. We’ve wasted enough time, and we need to get to New York before tomorrow morning.”

My jaw dropped. “New York? That’s where we’re going?”

“Where did you think it was?” asked Jack, speaking up. “Seattle?”

I didn’t answer. 

It was a quick trip across the street, and it only took a few minutes to find Silas, make up some story about going to a movie with my friend Lucy, give him the note Monique had written for ‘Mom’, and get out of there. I looked back at my brother and sister, and wanted to badly to give them a hug and say I loved them, but Monique’s instructions had been clear. Act natural, and leave explanations to Mrs. Burnett.


	5. Chapter 5

Half an hour later we were in a van, speeding out of my tiny town. I looked around me at all the stores and corner I’d known since I was small. There was the store where I’d played hide-and-seek with my brother, Peter, and friend Lucy. What about Peter? What would he think when I disappeared? I shook that thought out of my head and faced forward.

Jack was driving. I guessed that the blond boy was seventeen or eighteen. He drove carefully and alertly, not like my older brother. Whenever Anthony drove he sat back, fiddled with the music, and tried to jab Silas or me in the ribs beside him.

I closed my eyes. Thinking about my family was bad, but having not been able to even say good-bye was way, way worse.

Angela touched my arm and smiled a little. I shrugged. “You might want to get some sleep. George asked Hermes to speed us up a bit, but it’ll still take a while to get to camp.”

I shook my head. I did want to sleep, for reasons Angela wouldn’t understand, but not quite yet. “Tell me about camp. Tell me about the gods.”

Angela raised her eyebrows. “Funny-- it’s usually much harder to get a new kid to believe us.”

“Well, I’ve had suspicions,” I said. And a little bit of help, I thought.

“Whatever that means. Well, each of the cabins at camp houses the kids of a god.”

“Who’s your parent?”

She half-smiled, just a facial gesture with no mirth. “She’s not a very major goddess. You might not have even heard of her.” She put her hands in her lap and examined them, not looking up. “She’s Aletheia, the spirit of truth. Being her daughter doesn’t make for many powers.”

“Which means...”

“A demigod can have certain-- powers depending on who their parent is.”

“Like, magic?”

She scrunched her eyebrows. “I guess so. We don’t know what to call them, really. But anyway, Aletheia as a mom isn’t exactly an advantage. I can tell when other people are lying, no matter how good they are. But I also am completely incapable of telling a lie myself.”

“Remind me never to play poker with you,” I said, trying for a smile. I didn’t get one, but Angela’s brow smoothed. “George is the son of Hermes. That’s the biggest cabin because it takes in all the kids whose parentage we don’t know yet.”

“That’s where I’ll go?”

“Yeah. Monique, her dad’s Apollo. He’s really cool, one of the few gods who I’ve met.”

“You’ve met Apollo?” When I’d learned about Greek mythology in sixth grade, he’d been one of my favorites second to his twin sister, Artemis.

“Yeah. Last summer we ran into him on a recruiting trip.” She leaned toward me and whispered, “and he’s hot.”

The two of us burst into giggles, and Monique gave us a disapproving look.

“What is her deal?” I asked Angela. “Whenever I say something, she looks like she wants to run me over with a school bus.”

Angela sniggered, her hand over her mouth. Once she stopped laughing, she tried to look serious. “Don’t be hard on her. Monique’s our best recruiter. She comes on almost every single mission, and she spreads herself pretty thin. She got to camp by herself, without a satyr or anything, so she’s pretty indignant whenever we pick up a kid from one of the safe places.”

I frowned. “Are there really so many monsters out there? I mean, I never noticed any. Couldn’t we just hide from them?”

“They’re everywhere. They can disguise themselves to lure us in. And they don’t find us by seeing. Demigods apparently have a certain scent, and that’s how they track us.”

I immediately sniffed my sleeve. 

She grinned. “We can’t smell it. Just the monsters and the satyrs can tell the difference. Also, it’s dangerous to carry around a cell phone. It’s dangerous-- they’re like signal flares to all the monsters in the surrounding area.”

I thought of the Blackberry and charger I’d stuffed into my bag in the few minutes I’d had to pack, and was suddenly glad I’d insisted on going into the house alone. For a second I worried that Angela was going to ask me if I’d packed a cell phone, and I couldn’t lie. But she was looking out the window with a thoughtful look on her face. “Get some sleep. There’ll be plenty of time to tell stories at camp.” Her face seemed to relax, as though even as I was going away from my home, she was getting closer to hers.

So finally, with nothing else to do, I laid my head against the window and closed my eyes. I guess I was a lot more tired than I’d realized, because I was asleep in moments.

As my vision cleared, I looked around to see I was in a forest. Weird. I’ve never showed up in a forest before; it had always been a graveyard. Looking around, I briefly took in trees, trees, as far as the eye could see. But then I focused on the one thing of importance: Nico, sitting on a log and looking surprised.

I marched up to him and, by way of a hello, yelled, “Why didn’t you tell me?!!”

He coughed, and I stood there tapping my foot.

Nico first showed up in my dreams when I was ten. He was eleven years old. I can almost laugh when I remember the first time I saw him, this scrawny kid in his black clothes and pale skin, and the creepy sword he carried. The first night he just sat there and stared at me, and I stood and stared at him, for what felt like an hour, then I woke up.

But the next night he showed up again. I remembered that hour like it was yesterday. He, as the older one, spoke first. “Okay, we’re obviously stuck here, so I’m Nico di Angelo. What’s your name?”

It was a weird friendship. I suspected that Nico was a product of my overactive imagination, but either way he kept on showing up, every night. I tried to tell my dad about him once, when I was twelve, but all he said was how cute it was that I still had an imaginary friend. And so I never told anybody else about the boy I met in my dreams, though I sometimes retold some of Nico’s best stories to Anthony or Silas. 

The past six years I’d been almost convinced I was insane, because once in a while, strange things would happen. One time I told Nico about a boy who’d called me crazy when I won a school poetry contest. The next day, Justin came into class with a black eye, and I thought I saw a black-haired, tall kid wink at me through the window. When I’d asked Nico about it, he just smiled.

Nico told me crazy stories, about fighting monsters and winning victorious battles. I always assumed he made them up, but he was a good storyteller and one hour was a lot of time to kill every single night.

So now I stood there, looking daggers at my best friend, and waiting.

Nico sighed. He nodded slowly, keeping his gaze on the ground. Finally, he let his eyes flick back up to mine, and said, “okay. I think I owe you an explanation.”


	6. Chapter 6

“You think?” My glare was probably a little less threatening since I had to look up at him.

Nico looked at his shoes, and I noted how old he looked. He could have been a senior. His hair was dark and shaggy, cut in a style that I would have called emo if it wasn’t Nico. He wore a white t-shirt, black jeans, and the same leather aviator jacket he wore the first time I met him. It nearly fit him now. His eyes were chocolate brown and the most expressive eyes I’d ever seen. His skin used to be olive-toned when we were kids, but lately he’d gotten paler and paler. It was almost pasty white, but in a cute, teenage-zombie sort of way.

He opened his mouth, but I cut him off. “So this is how you dress up to try and make peace?” I asked coldly, gesturing at his t-shirt. I didn’t mind it really; it was better than the black that he always wore. It actually gave his skin a little color, but I was willing to turn anything into an argument.

He studied my face for a moment, then blew out a sigh. “Yeah, you’re mad.”

“So you’re not as dumb as you look,” I fired back.

Nico almost smiled, then bit his cheek to suppress it. “Okay, sit down and I’ll explain.”

I plopped down on the log beside him and glared until he spoke.

When we were little, the first thing we did, in the few weeks of my dreams, was fill each other in about our lives. The thing about being stuck with somebody for an hour is that you end up knowing things nobody else does. He told me all about his family, his problems with his dad and how he had to move from place to place. I told him about my hopes to be a writer or a lawyer, and how I hoped Anthony would get into a good art school and do music. One night he showed up and told me in between sobs that his sister was dead. He cried shamelessly then, his little-boy face buried in his hands and my hand on his shoulder.

Now Nico told me a different story. He started over, telling me about how the three main male gods had made a pact never to have children. And how when Hades fell in love with a mortal and had Nico and his sister, Zeus had killed their mother and forced the god of the Underworld to hide his children. 

“You told me your dad was an undertaker!” 

He shrugged. “That was the closest to the truth I could get.”

“Is your stepmom really a botanist?”

Nico’s face looked like he was smelling something awful. “We’ll get to her.”

My friend went on to explain how some demigods had come to rescue him and his sister from a monster attack, then how his sister had gone on a quest shortly after that. 

“It wasn’t a car crash that killed her,” he told me, struggling to keep a straight face. “Bianca sacrificed herself to save this guy named Percy and his friends. I blamed him for a long time for her death, but I’ve gotten over that.” He rushed away from the topic of Bianca, on to how he grew up wandering around through both the lands of the dead and the living. He’d spent the last few years going from camp to the outside world to the Underworld, searching for more demigods to recruit. 

“I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you the truth,” he finished, “but you would’ve thought you were absolutely insane to think up something like that. Or worse, you could have told somebody else and they could have killed you because you were a half-blood. I still tried to help out in little ways.”

“Like when you beat up that kid for me. And the bracelet for my last birthday.” I looked down. Sure enough, a thin silver chain was fastened around my wrist. He’d given it to me the night before my fourteenth birthday in a dream, and when I woke it was on the desk beside my bed.

“You still wear it,” he said, smiling.

“‘Course I do,” I chuckled. “It was assurance that I wasn’t completely crazy. So,” I asked, looking around, my anger long gone, “are you at camp right now?”

“I think right now we’re out in the woods. I was on scout patrol.” He cursed, standing. “Josh is going to kill me!”

“Don’t you have, like, some sort of immunity? Being the prince of the dead and all?”

He almost smiled, but still looked worried. “I think I’d better go. But I’ll see you soon-- you’ll be to camp in a few hours.” He pondered something for a moment, then frowned. "Um, we should probably not make it obvious that we know each other. I mean, we can’t exactly hide it completely, but it might freak people out.”

“How do we know each other, anyway? Did you ever figure that out?” When we were little we made up impossible theories for why he showed up in my dreams, but we never came to a reasonable conclusion. Not that anything today was even close to reasonable.

Immediately I stood for a hug. He wrapped his arms around me like he did every night when he had to leave and I noticed that being a son of Hades, he shouldn’t be warm. But he was, and he pulled away and smiled at me. “Your hair looks nice. See you.” 

Then he was gone, and my eyes flew open. George was looking at me. “Why are you smiling?"

I looked at my reflection in the window, which was now dark. Sure enough, I had a goofy grin on my face. I touched my hair, in a loose braid hanging to my waist. “Nothing,” I murmured dreamily.

“Whatever. Well, anyway, it’s a good thing you woke up now. My dad listened. We’ll be at camp in a couple hours.”

“Yeah,” I whispered, looking at my reflection and smiling again, “I know."


	7. Chapter 7

I don’t know how the whole ‘Hermes, god of roads’ thing worked, but it sure helped speed us up. I was thankful for the millionth time in my life that I never got car sick, because the trees and buildings whizzing by at the speed of light would’ve been just too much.

Jill, however, wasn’t that lucky. She sat in the backseat with her head between her knees while Jack rubbed her back with a gentle hand. Every so often he would catch me watching them and glare, his piercing blue eyes startling my gaze somewhere else for a while, but my focus always went back to the two of them.

“Why’s he so mad at me?” I asked Angela in a whisper.

She frowned. “Don’t take it personally. He’s really protective of Jill, and she risked her life to keep that thing occupied while we got you out of the house.”

I looked at them again. He leaned toward her, his forehead almost touching hers in hushed conversation. Their hair mingled, exactly the same color.

“They’re dating?”

“Sort of,” George butted in, rolling his eyes. “We know they like each other but they won’t come out with it.”

So camp had its own teenage drama, too. “Who’s Percy?” I asked, then bit my tongue, cursing myself inwardly.

The others’ surprise was obvious on their faces. “What do you mean?”

I scrambled to come up with a suitable lie. “I overheard one of you talking about some guy named Percy. Just wondering.” I shrugged, like it was no big deal.

“Percy Jackson,” Angela began, her voice a little softer, “is a hero. He’s saved the camp again and again, and everybody worships him like he’s a god.”

George leaned in and we all did too, to hear him say, “I heard that Zeus offered him immortality after the Titan war, and he rejected it!”

“Yeah,” Angela said, slightly irritated but just as animated as George was by the story. “You didn’t know that? He wanted to stay with his girlfriend, Annabeth Chase, you know, from Athena cabin?”

“Oh yeah, they’ve been an item for a while.”

I leaned back in my seat. From what I heard so far, Camp Half-Blood seemed like a summer-camp version of high school. All I wanted to do was keep my family safe, and maybe be able to hang out with Nico. Actually hang out with him. Unless I was crazy, but for now I put that thought aside and decided to hope. We could eat lunch together, and go on hikes, and I could get to know the person he’d been hiding all the time he’d been an undertaker’s son to me. Maybe people would gossip behind our backs. ‘We all know he likes her,’ they would say, ‘but--’

“What are you smiling about?” George was turned almost completely around in his seat, looking into my eyes with his blue ones. His teeth were crooked but blinding white, and his red hair was a few shades brighter than mine. 

“Oh, nothing,” I said stupidly. 

“Don’t worry about camp,” he said, bouncing in his seat with little-kid excitement. “It’s awesome! You’ll love it.”

“Mm-hm.”

I started to see the others’ countenance change. Jack and Jill were sitting, chatting happily with their hands almost touching on the seat between them. Angela smiled a little, and even Monique drummed her fingers on the steering wheel when she took her turn to drive. If this place I was going was home to them, maybe leaving my own wouldn’t be so bad.

I sat restlessly, wishing I’d brought a book or at least my iPod. But it wasn’t as long of a wait as I thought it was going to be. Only half an hour later we rolled to a stop at the foot of a hill. I jumped out almost as quickly as the others, looking up at the tall pine tree. Something glittered gold on a branch, and a scaly purple shape at the foot of the tree. Tiny twin columns of smoke rose from the shape. Oh. I thought of something Nico had said in one of his crazy stories: that his guard dog was a dragon, and I realized that technically this was true.

Together the six of us climbed the hill and when we reached the top I let out a tiny gasp. A whole world lay out in front of me. I could see a gleaming white pavilion, a rectangle of mismatched cabins, and the lake glittering in the distance. Swarms of kids moved every which way, making the place look like a human machine. The only normal-looking thing was a big house, painted white, that stood in the corner of the clearing.

This, apparently, was where we were headed. I fell into line between George and Jill, and tried not to shake with nervousness. I crossed my fingers behind my back like I always did when I was anxious, and wished I was in the kitchen doing dishes. Or better yet, at the park with Anthony. Was that really only a day ago? It seemed like an eternity. 

Monique led the way into the house. It was a bit dim, and I slowed my pace until George almost bumped into me. “Hey!” he exclaimed, more surprised than annoyed.

“Sorry,” I muttered, and hurried on. Soon we entered a brighter room, with a ping-pong table in the middle and about twenty to thirty people around that. Most of the individuals were teenagers, with the exception of a man in a wheelchair and another pudgy guy in a leopard print shirt. I’d always hated animal print clothing, and decided instantly not to like this man.

“That’s Dionysus,” George whispered behind me. I jumped before processing what he’d said.

“The god? The wine dude?” I whispered back.

“Yep.”

“Oh,” I began, then decided not to continue.

“What?” The boy behind me sounded amused. 

“He doesn’t look very, um, godly?”

George just laughed. The sound rang out in the now silent room. I turned from George’s face to all the eyes watching me, and almost wanted to turn back around and keep talking to the redhead. Instead I crossed my fingers again behind my back, hoped George didn’t see it, and waited for somebody to speak.

The middle-aged man in the wheelchair rolled over to me. I breathed a sigh of relief. He looked like the one I’d most rather speak to, with a well-trimmed beard and kind eyes.

He extended his hand toward me. I reached forward to shake it, and was surprised that my hand didn’t even tremble.

“Welcome to Camp Half-Blood,” he said.


	8. Chapter 8

“Um, yeah, thank you,” I stammered. He smiled kindly and wheeled himself back toward the table, gesturing for all of us to sit. I ended up with Angela on one side of my seat and a beautiful girl on the other. I watched the stranger with interest; her blond hair was up in a ponytail and her piercing grey eyes flashed in her heated discussion with a short, dark-skinned boy on her right. The smile on the boy’s face said that the topic wasn’t serious, though, and I watched the friendly debate with amusement.

All eyes were soon drawn to the doorway as two boys walked in. Both of them had dark hair, but that was where the similarities ended. The first guy was tall, tan, and muscular, with bright green eyes and a perfectly white smile. Everybody smiled or waved, as if eager to get his attention.

“Don’t get any ideas,” Angela whispered. I could hear a smile in her voice as she continued, “that’s Percy’s girlfriend sitting next to you.”

I nodded absently, but didn’t say anything. I wasn’t ‘getting any ideas’ for two reasons: Percy was gorgeous, but he was older than me and furthermore, he was taken. Also, another boy had walked through the door, even though nobody else had given him so much as a glance.

He was still wearing the white t-shirt, though the jacket had apparently been shed in the warm late afternoon. His hair was tousled and black as night. Those brown eyes scanned the room and when he saw me he smiled sheepishly, a smile I wondered now if anybody else had ever seen. That thought made me feel warm inside.

Nico made his way over to my side of the table. Annabeth saw him and moved to make room, emptying the seat between us. Annabeth and Percy (who had immediately sat down next to Annabeth; the other boy had grinned and moved to a seat somewhere else) at least, it seemed, were on good terms with the prince of the dead.

I bit my lip as Nico pulled the chair back and sat down. It took all my willpower not to hug him, but I bumped his knee with my own and he grinned, kicking my foot. Percy’s girlfriend gave us a funny look and I made myself look around instead of at my best friend.

It was obvious that the man in the wheelchair had been in the middle of something, and the meeting continued. Listening to the talk, I gathered a lot of the atmosphere. Dionysus, the god, didn’t contribute at all to the conversation. Instead he sat, staring at a wine magazine from 1957. It was clear that though this guy may be the camp director, all respect was given to the man in the wheelchair, whose name I learned was Chiron. That name rang a bell, but I couldn’t quite place it.

The talk consisted of a recent injury due to carelessness during one of the camp games, a mess-up in the dish duty schedule for the previous day, and the upcoming game of capture the flag. I didn’t catch anything strange, except the words ‘naiad’ and ‘satyr’, and the constant use of various gods’ undergarments as expletives.

“So this is sort of a normal camp after all,” I whispered to Nico, my eyes still on the talking man.

“No way you could call this place normal,” he replied, not even turning to look at me, and we both suppressed laughter. Not that laughter was frowned upon in this group. The people around me did seem like a big happy family, no matter how cliché it sounded. The two guys across from me grinned identically and made jokes in not-so-hushed voices. A few girls were gossiping in the corner, doing their nails and not shutting up even when Chiron asked them.

The meeting came to an end and Chiron turned to Monique. “I received your message about strange happenings. Would you please tell me what happened?”

I bit my lip. Some of the campers had trickled out after Chiron dismissed them, but over half of them lingered, chatting in the hall or still sitting at the table finishing plans or conversations. Most of these kids looked up at the sound of Chiron’s voice.

Monique started to speak, but Nico cut her off. “Chiron, I don’t think Kate has anything to contribute to this. I could show her around or something.”

I heard someone behind me say, “wait a second, is that his girlfriend?”

“Don’t think she looks a bit--alive for you, Nico?” asked a different girl.

Both Nico and I whirled around to glare, but I couldn’t tell who’d made the comment and I scowled as I turned back to hear Chiron say, “of course. Show her Cabin Eleven. Thank you for offering, Mr. di Angelo.”

We walked out the front door into dusky early evening. Nico led me toward the marble pavilion, his hand on my elbow. It was a charming, if a bit protective, gesture, and I leaned into him. “Thanks,” I muttered.

“For what?” 

“Getting me out of there. I don’t think I could’ve explained what I did--”

Nico looked at his feet, then back up ahead. “Don’t feel bad that nobody really noticed you. New kids are coming in almost a few times a week right now, and everybody’s gotten used to it.”

“Yeah, I don’t really want to stand out anyway.”

“Mm-hm.”

I crossed my fingers. I hadn’t thought it would be different talking to Nico in real life, but it was. In our graveyard I could tell him anything, no matter what I thought he would say. One time we didn’t speak to each other for a week, but even after the worst fights we got too lonely to keep hating each other. Even those silences were more comfortable than this one. We’d never had an awkward silence between us before.

“Did you get to talk to Anthony before you left?” he asked.

“No, but I grabbed my phone and a charger.”

Nico looked at me. “You’d really break camp rules to talk to your brother?” he asked.

I looked back at him, my gaze steady and my mouth shut. He chuckled. “Yeah, of course you would.”

“Of course,” I said, bumping him with my shoulder. There, that was better. I was a whole head shorter than him, but I didn’t mind looking up.

The moment was shattered by no other than Angela, jogging over to us. I realized that we’d stopped walking and were standing in the middle of the grass like a pair of idiots. 

I blushed, but Angela didn’t notice. “No time to show Kate her cabin. It’s time for dinner,” she told Nico. I saw that even she was a bit stiff around him, and he only nodded in answer. She took off toward the pavilion, which was filling up with kids coming from all over camp.

“Come on,” Nico said, and we both set off at a run. I could tell he was going slow so I could keep up-- I’d never been a very fast runner, and he knew it. 

“You have to sit with Cabin Eleven, since you’re undetermined,” Nico said between breaths on our way into the pavilion.

“Which means I haven’t been claimed yet?” I guessed.

“Yeah.”

“Why can’t I sit with you,” I whined.

He shook his head. “Camp rules,” he said, shrugging with a sad look on his face. Waving, he left me and sat at a table all by himself. 

I was swept up in a crowd of bustling campers. Remembering what Angela had said about Cabin Eleven being the biggest one, I followed this group through the food line and sat at the very end of the table. Pushing my food around on my plate, I looked at the empty goblet set to my right. 

“You talk to it,” George said, pushing into a spot next to me. I grinned at his crooked teeth, glad for anything familiar. Then I processed what he’d said. “Wait, what?”

He laughed. “Say what drink you want.”

I frowned, still not sure what he meant. But I said, “a lemon San Pellegrino sounds great.” And suddenly my cup filled with a fizzing clear liquid. I took a sip and was reminded of picnics with my family, collecting the little tabs to make necklaces with my sisters. It made me a little sad, but I smiled at George. “That,” I said, “is awesome.”

He nodded. “This place has got some perks.”

I laughed and took another drink of my soda and played with my food a little more. Loud conversations buzzed around me, but all I could think about was Nico sitting alone and the Blackberry in my bag.


	9. Chapter 9

It was nearly midnight before I could be sure everybody was asleep. Standing among soft breaths and restless shifting, I made my way to the door. Stepping over a ten-year-old with a teddy bear, I opened the door and slipped out into the night.

It was colder than I expected. I hunched my shoulders against the urge to rush back inside, and walked around behind the cabin. 

In my head, I tried to justify what I was about to do. George had said that camp was the safest place for a half-blood. The boundaries kept monsters out. But Angela had also been clear about how dangerous the use of a cell phone would be. I wanted to talk to my brother, but Monique was sure everything had been ‘explained’ to him.

How did you ‘explain’ this? How did you tell what happened when a girl disappeared out of a tiny town? What would they say at my school? To all the family friends? And what was my ‘mother’ going to tell Anthony, Silas, or Liza? What about Emily?

What if that grey thing had come back for me, and all he had found was my family? What if he’d already killed them all? How would I know? No. I had to at least check to see if my family was okay. And it really wouldn’t hurt so long as no monsters got in and nobody found out. I pressed the ‘A’ key and held my breath.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Tony,” I said, struggling to keep my voice calm. “It’s Kate.”

He laughed. “Yeah, I know. I do still have your caller ID, you know. Just because you left doesn’t mean we exiled you.”

Just because I left? What exactly had my mother told him? “Yeah, good point,” I said, and waited for him to give away more of what Mom had said.

“Yeah, well. So what’s up over there?” 

He knows where I am. Or at least he thinks he does. “Not much,” I said vaguely, “hey, sorry for calling so late.”

“What do you mean? It’s nine over here. It’s not like I go to bed before nine.”

Crap! I’d forgotten about the time difference. “Oh, right. Forgot. Well, what’s up over there?"

“Not really anything much. I mean, all of us are absolutely seething that you got to go to Lynn and Jacob’s place without any of us, but besides that, we’re fine.” His tone was mostly light, but I knew that part of him wasn’t joking. So there it was. My mom was smarter than I gave her credit for. Lynn was Mom’s sister, and she lived with her husband in Chicago. It was a bit of a long shot, me heading off to Illinois at the drop of a hat, but still much more explainable than the truth.

Anthony was still talking. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why couldn’t I come with you?”

“Oh, uh, it was kind of a last minute thing.”

“Mm-hm. You and Mom probably planned it. But maybe I could come and join you in a few weeks?”

How long was I ‘staying at Lynn's’? “I don’t know. I know the tickets cost a fortune.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” We weren’t poor, but money was always a bit tight, definitely too tight to send multiple kids off to Chicago.

“Maybe you can go some other time. When I’m--back.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Um, how long did Mom say I was staying--here?” 

“All summer. Honestly, it’s completely unfair. You’re over there having some big adventure--"

“Oh, you really have no idea,” I muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing. Go on.”

“You’re having some big adventure while I’m stuck here babysitting the girls and doing the dishes and sorting the laundry...” he trailed off.

“And doing all the things that I do?” I prompted him with a grin in my voice.

“Well, yes.”

I laughed, an almost real laugh this time. “I think you’ll live. Now I should probably go. Um, Jacob needs it quiet. He has a huge meeting tomorrow or something.” It made me sad to be lying about hanging out with my aunt and uncle. I hadn’t seen Jacob or Lynn in over a year, and I knew Tony missed them just as much as I did. 

“Well, keep in touch,” Anthony said.

“Yeah, I will,” I choked out, “bye then.”

“Talk to you later.” The line went dead.

I stood there, my phone to my ear, for more than a few minutes. Tears swam in my eyes and threatened to spill over. I blinked, looking up at the stars and trying to dry them out. I was just about to go and sneak back into my cabin when I heard a familiar voice say, “what are you doing?”

I turned with a start. It was George. His arms were crossed and he saw the phone in my hand. I expected him to get mad, but his expression softened. “Calling your family?”

“My brother,” I said stiffly, still waiting for a lecture on rule-breaking.

“Hey, chill. You have perfect reason to want to talk to them. Annabeth herself has a cell phone, but don’t tell her I know that.” He smiled, winking, and I nodded numbly. “Well, it’s freezing. You should probably come inside.” His face went serious. Here it comes. “And hey, be careful when you use that phone. You’re lucky I’m the one that woke up, otherwise you’d be in serious trouble. I’m not gonna rat on you, but any one of the others might. We Hermes kids, we’re not exactly the most trustworthy kids you’ll ever know. Me being the exception of course.” 

“Of course.” I cracked a grin and nodded, following him inside.


	10. Chapter 10

The next day, sun shone through the open windows on the busiest scene I’ve ever seen in the morning. At my house we all woke up sluggishly, not even trying to speak in a civil tone to each other until after breakfast. Here, laughs and shouts rang out in the chilly morning air. Somebody shook my shoulder again and I looked up at George’s bedhead. “C’mon, Sleeping Beauty. Get up.”

I glanced at his watch and sat up slowly, muttering obscenities under my breath. “And why,” I asked, gritting my teeth, “exactly, are you unceremoniously removing all happiness from my soul at such an ungodly hour?”

“Are you always this eloquent in the morning?”

“Nah, I’ve been wanting to say that to somebody forever. But my family loves me-- so they don’t rip out my cheerfulness--at seven o’clock in the morning!” Between each spurt of speech Grover burst into laughter while I pulled jeans over my shorts and rummaged through my bag in search of a t-shirt. The first one I found was midnight blue, printed with A Starry Night, Anthony’s favorite painting. I’d stole it from his room to use as a pajama shirt last week. I held it to my nose. It smelled like him. I sighed and pulled the shirt over my tank top, then joined George at the door.

He glanced at my t-shirt. “Van Gogh?”

“Mm-hm,” I grumbled, squinting at my suddenly-bright surroundings. 

“Not a morning person?”

I glared, my tone nearly dripping with sarcasm. “Now, what would give you that impression?”

He laughed again. “C’mon. Breakfast.” He set off at a run to catch up with the Hermes cabin, and I groaned, following him at a much slower pace.

Nico smiled at me on my way through the columns with my cabin, and I gave him an exaggerated glower, squinting at the bright sun. He grinned even bigger and I stuck my tongue out at him. It was a childish gesture that we’d exchanged for years. He shook his head, rolled his eyes and stuck his tongue back at me. Campers nearby shot us strange looks and the smile on my friend’s face dissolved into an expression that was almost sullen. I frowned, but he wouldn’t look at me. I bit my lip and turned to follow Cabin Eleven through the breakfast buffet line.

While I picked at my whole wheat bagel, I observed Nico with a new interest. When we were alone in our graveyard, there was nothing to do but talk to each other, and he was almost always cheery around me. It took me awhile to realize that I’d never seen him around other people. 

Annabeth and Percy were friendly enough with the son of Hades, but all of the other campers gave him a wide berth. When I’d come to camp, I’d expected a ‘Nico di Angelo fan club’, and dozens of girls surrounding him at every opportunity.

What had I been thinking? That just because I thought he was so amazing, everybody else at Camp Half-Blood did, too? That since I was dazzled by his warm brown eyes, and his shaggy dark hair that every other girl swooned when he walked by? I frowned, indignant, watching a girl who looked about nine stare at Nico, as if scared he would pounce. They didn’t know him. Who were they to judge?

Then I watched Nico’s expression, and wondered if I’d been blind this whole time. The look he gave the girl was just short of a snarl, and she scurried away. His expression changed, almost guilty when he caught me watching him. I looked away, quick as I could, and took a bite of my bagel. It tasted too much like the food my mom used to pack in my lunch. I stood, walked over and scanned the food choices again, checking for anything with an unfamiliar taste, anything that wouldn’t remind me of home. I snatched a bowl and filled it with dry Froot Loops, told my glass to give me milk and smiled. That was better.

George sat down next to me after his chat with a girl at the end of the table. He was blushing. “Okay, so as soon as we get back we need to clean up for inspection. It’s usually pretty hard for us, since we’re such a big cabin. You’re best off hiding your stuff under some bed.”

“Okay, for a minute there I was about to compare this to military school--”

He grinned. “You kidding? This is Camp Half-Blood. We point and laugh at military school.”

I laughed. Really, truly laughed for the first time since I’d arrived here. I held a hand over my mouth and gasped through giggles, tears streaming down my face. He smiled.

After inspection, George happily handed orientation duty over to Nico. He nodded solemnly and nearly ran to join his girlfriend at the archery range. 

Whispers followed us on the way to the lake. Eyes turned toward us everywhere and campers frowned as if Nico walking around with another person were a rare sight. 

"Why don't they like you?" I finally asked my friend. 

Nico looked at me, a bit startled. "What do you mean?"

"All the other kids act like you're some kind of unpredictable animal. I mean, except Annabeth and Percy."

Nico looked at the ground. "Yeah, Annabeth and Percy are great. But then I've known them longer than any of these kids."

Nico bent down to pick at his shoelaces. "It wasn't so bad after the Titan War, when me and my dad were accepted into Olympus by Zeus himself. That was a good time. I actually had friends for a little bit. But demigods are kind of like the gods. After a while, and a year at home and everything, they just forget. Especially since they don’t really want to remember that they’re in debt to a son of the least favorite god. And I'm afraid I don't really help them want to get along with me."

I frowned. "No, not really."

He looked at me. "You saw that little girl, didn’t you?"

I bumped his shoulder. “Yeah. I mean, you need a breath mint?”

He looked at me like I was crazy, and I blushed. “You know, because you kind of bit her head off-- oh, never mind.” 

He cracked up. I glared at him, annoyed. “It sounded a lot better in my head, I’ll have you know!”

Nico tried to apologize, but he never really stopped laughing until long after lunchtime.


	11. Chapter 11

You know those days when you spring out of bed to a perfectly beautiful day, and everybody’s in a good mood, and the world just goes your way? Yeah, me neither.

A few days after arriving at camp I stumbled to the bathroom in a t-shirt and jeans, already late for breakfast. I spotted my reflection and groaned. Overnight a few zits had popped up on my chin and I didn’t have any makeup whatsoever to cover it up.

I groaned again, trying to figure out what to do with my hair. All the other girls in the cabin had made it to the dining pavilion with supermodel makeup and time to spare. I wondered, frustrated, if there was any magical demigod beauty-powers that everybody had but me. 

I was cramming my hair into a braid and glaring at my reflection when one of the angry red spots disappeared.

My mouth dropped open as one by one, my skin transformed itself. Almost all my freckles were gone, leaving only a sprinkle across my nose. My skin was soft and smooth, any blemishes history. Studying my face, I ran a hand through my hair, wondering. I almost always gave up on doing my hair and trapped it all in a braid or a ponytail, but on rare occasions my mom and I worked together to straighten it. Now I concentrated on my irritation at my hair and watched as the curls unraveled, leaving it almost twice as long as normal. 

“Okay, that’s creepy,” I whispered to myself, staring. Then the last-chance conch horn blast echoed in the morning air, and I raced out the door and up the hill. I felt the sensation of my hair bouncing on my back, as though I’d left it curly. I shrugged and snuck into the dining pavilion with a few other Hermes stragglers.

Now, having seen many a Hollywood movie, a tiny bit of me was expecting everybody to turn around and stare, but nothing like that happened. Instead Nico frowned and George nudged me to scoot over and make room for his girlfriend.

Or, I thought nobody had noticed. A little girl a few campers down the table whispered, “is she an Aphrodite kid, you think?”

I whirled around, cheeks flaming. The Aphrodite cabin, that I’d observed, was mostly full of airheaded, pretty girls whose only concerns were flirting and fingernails. “Are you still staring?” I shot back. The little girl, dark-haired and about Liza’s age, shrank back and turned to whisper to her friend in a scared tone.

“I’m worse than Nico,” I muttered to myself and didn’t even stand to get breakfast.

Nico walked over as soon as we finished eating. “How’d you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Your hair. I mean, it’s all--” Nico made vague hand gestures that I guessed meant that my hair was straight.

“I, uh, straightened it.” I shrugged and again felt more hair on my shoulders than I should have.

“You-- oh. It’s an illusion.” Nico looked troubled. He reached a hand out and I felt a tug at my scalp.

I stared. “But you’re not holding anything!” There didn’t appear to be anything between his fingers, but the second tug was definitely real. 

“Feel your hair,” he said. I put my hand on my hair and laughed. It felt just as tangled and curly as it was this morning. I put my hand on my face and frowned that I could feel the zits I thought had vanished.

“Try making it curl again,” he suggested. I frowned, picturing my hair as it’d been this morning. Suddenly my curly mane was back, in my face and blowing everywhere.

Nico muttered, “much better,” but he still looked worried. “How are you able to do that? There’s only one--” he broke off. 

I pestered him shamelessly, but he refused to finish the thought he’d begun. “I have to go. See you at lunch or something.” He was gone before I could demand he stay until he answered my question. I frowned and followed my cabin back for inspection.

For the past few days, Chiron had cut me a little slack. I’d wandered around camp talking to Nico and watching others take part in the activities. Today, however, George herded me along with half the cabin to the stables. I wrinkled my nose at the stink and stood by a little boy and another teenage girl. The girl nearly melted into giggles when Percy came out of the stables, and I rolled my eyes. But then I saw the creature that followed the son of the sea god, and my mouth dropped open for a reason besides Percy’s bright green eyes.

The jet-black steed stepped out of the doorway and glanced over the campers with what seemed like an almost annoyed look. The horse whinnied and I heard a dozen ‘ooo’s through the crowd as two feathery wings unfurled from the horse’s back. He stamped his hoof in the dirt and looked at Percy.

“Oh, c’mon, we’ve talked about this,” Percy said. I looked around to try and find who he was talking to, then stood agape again when I realized he was addressing the winged horse. “You let one of them ride you or no extra oats tonight,” he continued. “How ‘bout that?”

Percy turned to speak to the rest of us. “This is a pegasus,” he began. “They--” The horse whinnied again to interrupt him.

The son of Poseidon rolled his eyes. “Right. His name’s Blackjack, and he says that he better be getting paid for this.” Nearly all the campers laughed.

The girl next to me raised her hand. Percy’s eyebrows rose, but he called on her. Her voice sounded breathy and awed. “How’d you learn to talk to horses?” She batted her eyelashes at Percy.

“Blackjack is a pegasus, actually,” Percy said with another eye roll. "And it’s sort of a Poseidon thing.”

“Isn’t he so hot?” she whispered. 

It took me a moment and a glance at her expectant expression to realize she was talking to me. “Doesn’t he have a girlfriend? Isn’t she, like, right there?” I pointed at Annabeth, who was standing by and watching Percy.

The girl waved her hand, as if dismissing my comment. “Detail,” she said absentmindedly, “I’m Abby, by the way. In case you ever need a makeover.” She gave me a look that seemed to suggest I get on my hands and knees and beg her to cover my face with an inch-thick layer of makeup.

“No thanks,” I said aloud.

“What?”

“Nothing.” I looked back at Percy as more pegasi came out of the stable, fifteen in all. I did a quick head count. There were thirty of us. I smiled a little. Blackjack didn’t have to carry anyone, after all.


	12. Chapter 12

Just a few minutes later I was mounted uneasily on a pale brown pegasus who looked at me like she was barely resisting the urge to throw me off her back. Me? I was barely resisting the urge to back out and let somebody else go. 

I’m not afraid of heights at all, somehow. I have plenty of things that creep me out: deep water, sloths, the dark, and spiders (though not as much as my little brother, Silas-- he hates the things). I’ve always been proud of the fact that heights are not on that list, until now. I hadn’t ridden on a horse since I was four, sitting in front of my grandpa with his hands on the reins. Now I’m not that confident in my equestrian skills to save my life, should this horse decide all of a sudden that she doesn’t want me on her back.

Annabeth smiled at me. I liked her. She was cool and collected, and she didn’t seem to think she was ‘all that’ just because she was Percy’s girlfriend. “You’ll be fine,” she reassured me when I frowned to myself. “We’re just taking you up over the trees and circling the camp until you get the hang of it. Then you can come back down.”

I nodded without a word and she lifted herself onto Blackjack’s back. It seems she was the only person other than Percy that the black pegasus would deign to carry. 

“Just dig your heels into her sides. She knows what to do,” she told me, then Blackjack lifted off the ground with a flap of his huge, feathered wings. I couldn’t help uttering a low "wow," as Annabeth hovered, a grin on her face, waiting for me to follow.

I gulped and hesitantly gave my mount what I was sure was an inadequate heel-dig. But with a jerk and a wobble that nearly knocked me off, I felt muscles under me tense and I held on tight as she flapped her wings and the ground dropped out from underneath me with sickening speed.

Soon I was at the same level as Annabeth. She grinned expectantly, her blond hair shining in the sun as I surveyed my surroundings. The camp spread out below us, campers like tiny dolls or toy soldiers. Exhilaration rushed through me and I let out a noise that was half-gasp, half-giggle. 

Annabeth saw the expression on my face and grinned. “You’re flying,” she said. I felt my pegasus’ rough hair under my fingers, her wings jostling me with every flap, and the wind blowing in my hair. Yet despite all this I had to shake myself to be sure it was all real.

“Just lean in the direction you want to go,” Annabeth said, and dug her heels into Blackjack’s sides and he dove back to the ground, to get another camper started I guessed.

I bit my lip and leaned toward the water. My pegasus obediently flapped her wings and set off in that direction. Encouraged, I dug my heels into her sides a bit firmer and leaned more to the left, guiding her in a circle. 

Soon I was soaring high above the camp, much higher than some of the other campers, and taking in the beautiful view of Long Island Sound. The sun shimmered on the water, almost blinding me when I looked in that direction. I felt like I could have reached out and touched the sun, or like I could fly away into forever. 

Then Annabeth called over to me. “Kate, we’re going down. It’s time for lunch.”

“Okay!” I replied, and took one last, long look at the beautiful view before heading back to the ground. I handed my pegasus’s reins to Percy with a grin and let myself be caught up in the crowd of kids on their way to the dining pavilion. We all turned a corner and then Nico was beside me. “Hey,” he said. “Have fun?”

I grinned at him. “It was amazing! Why didn’t you come? It wasn’t just Hermes kids there; you could have joined us, I think.”

He shrugged. “The pegasi don’t really like me,” he explained.

“Why not?” Call me pushy, but I didn’t see how a horse could be judges of character.

He chuckled mirthlessly. “They say I smell.”

Raising one eyebrow, I laughed. “What?”

Nico’s smile disappeared, and he looked down, shuffling his feet on our way into the dining pavilion. “They say I smell like death,” he muttered.

I opened my mouth to say something. I’m still not sure what it was going to be, but I didn’t even get to try. Nico touched my shoulder, said, “I’ll talk to you later, okay?” and walked away over to his table. His hands in his pockets and not even looking back.

“Okay,” I muttered to nobody, and took my seat at the overflowing Hermes table beside George and some girl whose name I’d probably been told but I didn’t remember. Everybody dug into their sloppy joes and I poked at a salad, looking around at everybody chatting and eating and enjoying general chaos. Several newly claimed kids were welcomed to their new tables with friendly gestures and open seats. 

Observing everything around me, I thought I noticed more buzz and excitement than usual. I racked my brain for the day of the week. Friday. That rang a bell in the back of my mind, and I frowned, trying to figure out what was happening today. I didn’t have to wonder long, before some pre-teen boy shouldered his way into a seat beside me. “George,” the boy said, turning to the redhead on his other side, “what team are we on for capture the flag?”

Giving me a smile, George responded, “Joey, right? We’re on the blue team this week. You gonna help us win?”

The boy rolled his eyes, picking up his plate. “Duh!” he told us, and moved back to his end of the table.

“So that’s what’s going on,” I observed to George. “I was trying to figure out why all the twelve-year-olds are acting more hyper than usual.”

George laughed and took a bite of his sandwich. “Yeah. It’s kind of a big thing here. All the rivalries are caused and resolved by capture the flag.”

I smiled. “Who’s on red team?”

He nodded toward Annabeth’s table. “We tend to ally with Athena, and they hate the Ares cabin, so they’re on red. I think Hephaestus is teaming up with Ares--” he started counting on his fingers, “--Nemesis, Dionysus, and I feel bad but I always forget about all the minor cabins, so I don’t know about them. We’re with Poseidon, which is good. Annabeth and Percy combined, plus Tyson, pretty much means victory.”

“Who’s Tyson?”

George grinned. “Percy’s brother. Cyclops. Guy’s a beast-- literally. I don’t know if he’s here right now, but if he’s not Annabeth and Percy and all of us should be enough to win.”

I glanced toward Percy’s table, where the son of the sea god sat alone, and tried to make my next question sound casual. “Which side is Hades on?”

“You mean Nico? He’s the only one in his cabin,” George explained. “Um, I think he’s on red. I don’t really keep track of him. Got a thing for the guy, huh?”

“Shut up,” I groaned. “I was just wondering.”

George gave me a look and laughed. “Yeah, sure. Whatever. But yeah, I forgot, Nico sent skeleton mice after the Apollo cabin for pulling some prank the other day. So he’s on our team.”

I smiled. “Okay.”

George rolled his eyes. “Yeah, you totally don’t like him.”

“I said shut up!” I pleaded, still grinning.

“Okay, fine!” he laughed, holding his hands up in a gesture of self-defense and innocence. “But seriously,” he continued in a quiet voice, “think of the children!”

“Oh gods, just quit it!” I exclaimed through a laugh, pushing him toward his girlfriend, who rolled her eyes. 

All three of us laughed, and the girl beside me joined us. “Is it very dangerous?” I asked George.

“Of course it is! That’s the whole point!” George cried, putting an arm around his girlfriend. I had just realized I had no idea what her name was when she held her hand toward me. “I’m Jamie,” she said. “And don’t worry, it’s not gross with me and George in the same cabin because I’m not claimed yet.”

I nodded and shook her hand, pretending to understand and making a note to ask Nico or George about it. 

Jamie seemed nice. She had blond hair and almost no body fat, but wasn’t quite as shallow as some of the Aphrodite girls I’d met. She and I exchanged sarcastic looks at how excited George was to use his new crossbow and fart arrows, and with their help I started to look forward to capture the flag tonight.


	13. Chapter 13

The buzz did anything but calm down after lunch. Kids ran every which way, holding weapons that looked much too big for them. A twelve-year-old kid jogged right by me to the Hephaestus cabin with a huge ax and I shivered to think of Silas carrying around anything but a Nerf gun. 

I tried not to worry about the fact that so far nobody had said anything to me about getting a weapon. George didn’t talk about anything besides his brand new crossbow, and even Jamie had a short sword that looked pretty BA paired with her worn leather armor and shield. In fact, every camper in Hermes cabin at least had a slingshot or some kind of tool for self defense. 

I talked to Nico about it. His eyebrows shot up. “You with a sword? Scary,” he joked. He was in a better mood today. I didn’t say anything, but I thought to myself that it might be the idea of being on a team, working together for something. With Annabeth and Percy on our team, he had to worry less about people avoiding him.

“Seriously, though,” I protested. “I don’t have anything. I mean, I could just make an illusion and try to look like a tree or something, but--”

He frowned. “That’s really not funny. You shouldn’t use that until you know more about it. Magic is pretty unpredictable.”

I looked at him. “Didn’t you send skeleton mice after the Apollo cabin last week?”

He shook his head, looking perplexed. “That’s different. I know exactly what I can do with mine. But even if you can only make yourself look like other stuff, that could be dangerous. You don’t know if you can always turn back.”

I raised an eyebrow and laughed. “Seriously? You’re pulling the ‘if you keep doing that your face will stay that way’?”

“I’m not kidding,” he said, and his face took on an expression that I was used to, the look in his eyes when he was worried about something and wasn’t going to be distracted about anything else. 

“Okay, fine,” I caved. “But are you at least going to be around to keep me from being attacked defenseless and having my arm chopped off?”

He hesitated, then grinned. “Yeah, don’t worry, when you get mauled I’ll be right there.”

I half-chuckled and bumped his shoulder. “You realize that is nowhere near as reassuring as you thought it was going to be, right?”

He elbowed me in the side, that rare smile lighting up his face and making even his brown eyes seem less dark. “Yeah, I know.”

At that moment, a girl a few years older than me with chocolate-colored skin strolled by and turned to walk backwards. “Whoa!” she exclaimed mockingly, widening her dark eyes. “diAngelo smiling! Somebody get a picture; this is a historical event!” Smirking, she turned and despite herself, jogged away.

“Hold me back,” Nico tried to joke, but the laughing in his eyes was gone and he looked distracted again. Touching my elbow, he muttered, “I’ll see you around, okay?”

“Okay,” I replied. But he was already walking away.

Without an activity planned or anybody to hang out with, I wandered around the camp. I’d been here about a week, opportunities to explore hadn’t presented themselves as often as I’d hoped they would. I spent that afternoon with my hands in my pockets, making my way down all the paths I’d seen over the past few days. At one point I found myself in a little clearing where three thrones sat in disrepair. They seemed to be made of flowers. It was an eerie place, where transparent girls in wispy gowns peeked at me around trees and giggled incessantly. I didn't waste any time getting out of there.

For a while I sat on the dock. When I could tune out all the loud conversations and laughter, it was almost peaceful. I tried to pretend I was on vacation with my family, even for a moment, but that fantasy land didn’t seem to have a place for me in it anymore. Lately whenever I imagined going home I could tell that it would be different. Just the fact that my siblings were strangers, the fact that there was this whole huge world out there that they were completely oblivious to-- it all would torture me until I couldn’t stand to do something so ordinary as going to the post office or doing my homework. Maybe that was what it felt like to belong somewhere.

But somehow I got the feeling that I didn’t belong at Camp Half-Blood either. It was the closest I’d ever got to home, but still it seemed to me like even Nico belonged here more than I did. Almost everybody in camp held a grudge against him, and everybody in camp was wary of him, maybe even me. But wasn’t that worth it--wasn’t it a tiny price to pay-- to know who you were? 

A horn blew in the distance and I jumped. Looking around, I watched everybody else run towards the pavilion and started to get up. George ran past me, completely decked out in bronze armor and holding hands with Jamie. “C’mon, kid,” he called in my direction. 

I got up and broke into a sprint, catching up with them. We all crowded between the pillars halfway into Chiron’s speech about rules. Soon the horn blew again and the small mob of campers started in the directions of their sides. Hanging back, I scanned the crowd for a black t-shirt and found him. No armor and holding only his black sword, a grin lit up Nico’s face as he rushed up and grabbed my hand, pulling me along with him. 

“The game is on!” I heard somebody shout from far ahead, and I smiled as we all ran into the forest.


	14. Chapter 14

Nico didn’t let go of my hand.

Maybe I should have been focusing on the fact that I was completely unarmed and probably going to get maimed by some twelve-year-old with a weapon bigger than him, but for several minutes all I could think about was the fact that Nico’s fingers were long and thin, slightly cold, and still intertwined with mine when we reached the creek. 

When we got there he let go slowly. Holding his sword ready, he searched the trees for sign of movement. Most of the campers had gathered to discuss strategy a ways off, but Nico didn’t leave me wondering. “I asked if you could stick with me. Annabeth wants us to scout around the boundary and see if we can tell where their defense is. She said not to go onto their territory yet, but--” he looked at me and grinned. Glad that he was bringing me in on his little rebellion, I walked with him along the bank and tried not to slip or fall.

“So Annabeth pretty much runs the show?” I asked.

“Yeah. She sets up the other campers in big groups and sometimes she trusts a few people with specific jobs, but we all know that if we follow her instructions-- more or less-- we’ll be fine.”

I nodded, scanning the other side of the stream. I saw the occasional red helmet flash between branches, but no discernable groups were visible from where Nico and I stood. “Don’t you think that--”

Before I could finish my question I heard a sound almost like the bleating of a goat. Out of the trees came scrambling a satyr with curly hair. He wore a faded green t-shirt and grinned maniacally at Nico, who looked surprised but generally pleased. “Grover, hey. What’s up? I thought you were in Maine right now.”

“Nah,” Grover said, shaking his head. “It’s very nice in the winter, but I thought I’d drop by. Lucky for me I showed up during Capture the Flag. But anyway, Annabeth wants you to come help out with something really fast. Apollo’s trying to set your skeleton mice on us and it’s getting pretty annoying. All the girls are screaming and giving us away.”

At this point he seemed to notice me. “Oh, hey, who’re you?”

Nico put his hand on my back for a second, then pulled it away to fiddle with the handle of his sword. “This is Kate. She’s new. Undetermined.”

Nodding, I shook Grover’s hand. “Cool,” the satyr said. “So-- the mice?”

Nico blinked. “Right, yeah, I’m all over it. Be right there.” Grover ran off and Nico turned to me. “You gonna be okay? It’ll take five seconds to get rid of those rodents and then I’ll be right back.”

Crossing my fingers, I said, “yeah, it’s cool. I’ll just, you know, hang around here and bash anybody’s head in who tries to attack.”

He chuckled. “Okay. See you in a bit.” Then he disappeared into the trees.

Biting my lip, I looked around and after a few seconds sat down carefully on a rock to watch out for Nico. Not forgetting the reason I was here, I also scanned the trees every once in a while, but I could never catch more than a flash of armor. 

It seemed like hours before anything happened. I didn’t have my phone or a watch, so I wasn’t sure exactly how much time passed. Soon, however, rustling on the other side of the stream drew my attention. 

A small clump of teenagers were making their way carefully to the edge of the forest. Scrambling to a hiding place behind one of many huge boulders, I watched. Their heads were all tilted up, eyes focused on one tree near the bank. A tall girl with dark hair and perfect skin who I recognized as an Aphrodite started pointing up the tree, her head turning constantly as though watching out for spies. 

Soon the littlest kid in the group started up the tree. He climbed slowly while the girl on the ground tapped her foot and soon, fed up, led everybody else off into the woods with a call back that reached my ears. “And come up with a better hiding spot!”

Frowning, I followed the boy with my eyes. He was about halfway up the tree, and maybe five feet above him I glimpsed a flash of red, bigger than a helmet.

They had hidden the flag in the top of the tree. I tried to remember any rules about hiding the flag at ground level, but if not something had made the red team feel like they had to move it. I stood, forgetting to hide and debating whether to call after Nico or run and find him, but now the boy had the flag and was starting back down. Even if the way down was slower, there was still no time to run for help. 

Now the boy was only a few branches from the ground, now dropping to stand at the foot of the tree. The thought crossed my mind that I should be across the stream by now and--

There I stood, holding the flag. The kid’s eyes were wide as saucers and he went to grab it back. Quickly I imagined myself standing on the blue bank and found my feet resting in the footprints I had left. Suddenly a shout rang out behind me: “We have the flag!”

More cries followed and I was swept up in a crowd of blue helmets. Annabeth nodded at me, Grover pumped his fist, and George and Jamie came to clap me on the back and ask to hold the flag, which had turned blue and completely blank, glistening in the sun. 

Somebody asked where it had been hidden and I opened my mouth to answer, but just then caught sight of Nico’s face. He didn’t look elated that we had won, or impressed by the flag in my hand. The expression on his face spoke more of concern, realization, and even more than a little dread.

I handed the flag to George and left the crowd, walking up to him. As soon as I was close, he grabbed my wrist and without warning pulled me straight into darkness.


	15. Chapter 15

There was a sensation of flying through thick, cold air. Fleeting voices whispered in every direction, and I held tight to Nico’s hand. Seconds later we were across camp, back to the creepy little clearing with its dilapidated thrones. 

Nico let go of my hand and sat down at the foot of a tree. His face was paler than ever, and he seemed to struggle to lift his head to look at me. “How did you do that?”

I couldn’t decide what expression was on his face. The dread was still there, but concern had almost completely overwhelmed it. I sat beside him, facing the dark screen of branches that seemed to block out even the warm sunlight of camp weather. I was just opening my mouth when a huge, dark shape passed slowly through the corner of my eye. I frowned. “What’s that?”

Nico leaned his head against the trunk of the tree and closed his eyes. “It’s just Mrs. O’Leary, don’t change the subject.” He pulled his eyes open and waited.

I shrugged. “I don’t know, I just wanted to be on the other side of the creek.”

“So you teleported across?”

I forced a laugh. “Teleportation isn’t real.”

He shook his head. “That’s what it was.” His gaze broke away from mine and into the distance. “You’re lucky nobody but me saw it, but that’s what it was. I literally don’t know of any god who can do that.”

“Literally?” I asked absentmindedly.

“Huh?” His eyes refocused on my face, as though he was just remembering I was there. 

“Nothing.” It was a habit. Eliza always overused the word ‘literally’.

Nico stood and wobbled, leaning on the tree trunk. “C’mon,” he said, almost like he was telling his body to get it together. With a few more deep breaths he started to walk out of the clearing and gestured for me to follow him, looking back at me. “You can’t just start being like that with everything,” he told me, still slightly breathless. “You’re supposed to have specific powers, but nobody can teleport.”

I raised my eyebrows and stopped walking. “Hello, Mr. Let’s Just Walk Into a Tree and Across Camp.”

He shook his head and kept walking. “That’s different. That’s shadow travel, it has rules. And look at you! You’re not even tired.”

He was right on that. Every time I had seen a camper use their powers they were at least a little drained afterwards. I was perfectly fine, invigorated by victory and (I had to admit) a little excited that I’d discovered something new I could do. At least I was a total freak in that I could do too much, and not too little. 

We kept walking in silence. Nico led me through the woods and then into a small arena. This was where campers practiced combat, something I hadn’t had the courage to try yet. 

My friend picked up a generic sword off a table and handed it to me, The weapon seemed foreign in my hand, but this was the world I belonged to. I tightened my fingers around the handle and looked at Nico questioningly. He took a few steps back and drew his sword. “You can’t just use magic all the time. There’s going to be some time when it doesn’t work and you’re going to have to know how to defend yourself.”

With that he attacked. I could hardly keep his blows from making my face into sausage, much less make my own. How he could keep a steady breathing pattern under these conditions and be completely limp after traveling half a mile was a mystery to me. When I finally got a chance to swipe at his sword I wished the blow would somehow keep him back for a second so I could breathe. Immediately the handle wrenched itself out of Nico’s hand and flew across the arena. Nico frowned. “I saw that!”

I let the sword slide across the ground back to his feet and he picked it up. “This isn’t funny,” he said. “For all you know you could get kicked out of camp and then where would you go?”

I thought of my family. “You couldn’t go back there,” he corrected my thoughts, swinging with a strike that I barely caught on the edge of my weapon. “More monsters would just keep coming and your family couldn’t protect you.”

I looked at Nico and thought of that grey monster, its red eyes and razor-sharp teeth. Nodding slowly, I lashed out at the giant hound in my mind, pounded at Nico with the sword. It was graceless attack, a clumsy attempt at revenge for the thing I feared most: the destruction of my old life and the people in it. 

But it worked. Eventually he stopped countering my blows and just said, “that’s better.” Then the dinner call sounded and we headed toward the pavilion. During the next few days Nico was merciless. We skipped out on cabin activities and spent free time in the arena. I did it to make him happy, because no matter how hard Nico tried I could not embrace the idea of any real danger inside the boundaries of camp.

Then came the day when for a moment, it was all necessary.

Nico and I were just finishing up a round and splashing our faces with water from the large cooler at the edge of the arena when a flash of bright red from the entrance of the arena caught my eye. Turning to see who it was, I frowned. 

“How’d that get in here?” Nico asked, pulling his sword back out of its sheath. 

“What is it?” Squinting, I noticed that its legs were almost zipping through the air as the-- spider sped toward us. It was a giant arachnid, about the size of a kiddy pool, and as it got increasingly closer both Nico and I made the same observation. “It’s--”

“--on fire,” he said. 

I opened my mouth to say something else, probably ‘what the actual hell?’, but the thing was already in striking distance. Nico held his sword ready, and in the meantime I couldn’t decide whether there would ever be a more bizarre moment in my life. 

It attacked. Nico slashed at its legs but the thing was fast. No matter what Nico did the spider always turned to face me until I finally let my sword fly toward its body. The blade stuck in the dirt, the monster unharmed.

“Hang on, you can’t be here,” I muttered. The camp boundaries were supposed to keep these things out. 

The spider froze. It turned to face me, and I swear it cocked its head and looked confused. Nico looked back at me. “What--?” he whispered.

My voice grew stronger. I remembered the grey monster walking down my street and away, and I walked steadily toward this one. “You’re not allowed to be here. Go away.” I pointed toward the forest and the camp boundary line. 

The spider’s legs shivered for a second, as though in indecision, but then it turned around and headed in the exact direction my trembling hand indicated. 

Before I could take another breath Nico was done staring at me, shocked, and he grabbed my arm and started running back to the center of camp. He didn’t say a word, just hurried to the Big House and left me on the porch to run inside and call for Chiron. I could hear their voices muffled, Nico probably explaining and the centaur saying things I didn’t understand. 

I sat on the floor of the porch, arms around my legs and forehead pushed against my knees, fingers crossed on both hands.


	16. Chapter 16

For the next few days both Nico and Chiron seemed to watch me closely, as if I was a bomb just waiting to go off. I skipped cabin activities with George and Jamie and spent a little more time with Angela, because at least the three of them didn’t look scared whenever I walked into a conversation. 

During this time the monster attacks didn’t stop. More and more flaming spiders and even one or two of the giant grey dogs showed up far in past the camp boundaries, scaring all the campers nearby close to death. There were sightings, too, every day of some monster or another that nobody had ever seen before. I tried to help, but every time Nico dragged me to the other end of camp. “Let them take care of it,” Nico would advise. 

“But I could just tell--” I tried to protest, but he ignored me and pulled me into the volleyball court, threw me a ball and made me promise to never talk to a monster in front of any other camper.   
Mr. D and Chiron, along with the border patrol, were lost as to the pattern to the attacks. To them there seemed to be no consistency between the places where the creatures appeared, but there was. They were where I was, before Nico dragged me away. 

Then came one day, the deep breath before the plunge. Nico and I sat on the pier, our legs dangling, his toes touching the water. It was a beautiful day. The blue sky reflected, cloudless, on the calm lake, and the sun shone warm on the top of my hair. Nico’s face looked almost happy, his dark denim jeans rolled up and the wind ruffled his hair, so that the words ‘playful’ and ‘carefree’ were a little less difficult to think of when I looked at his face.

I bumped my foot into his and he looked at me. I could see my freckled reflection off his dark eyes. I had stared into the mirror that morning, concentrating until my hair had formed soft curls, real ones. A few more tries and, ignoring the ache in my head, every blemish on my face was gone. These little things I was sure he wouldn’t notice.

We kicked each other’s feet now in comfortable silence, and I almost laughed at the difference between this quiet calm and the bustling chaos in Cabin Eleven.

I frowned, reminded again that today marked my second week at Camp Half-Blood, and that I was still undetermined. I looked at the boy beside me. The campers avoided him because of his parentage, but I couldn’t help thinking that at least he knew. Everybody accepted me as a part of the background, even as slightly worth noting because of the flag, but I wondered how that might change when, or if, I was claimed.

“Nico?”

“Mm,” he said, splashing my feet with legs that were longer than mine. 

I tried to get him back, stretching my legs and even inching off the edge of my perch to reach the water. But I almost slipped and fell, so instead I just bumped his shoulder. I bit my lip. “Who do you think it is? The god who isn’t claiming me.”

His raised his eyebrows. “Honestly,” he began, and I nodded, prompting him to continue. “I don’t know. With most kids it’s pretty easy to tell. You know, they can control plants or water or they’re good pickpockets. But you’re not like any of the half-bloods I’ve ever seen come through here.” This almost made up for his calling me a kid. 

After a pause he continued, using his hands as he spoke. “I mean, the stuff you can do, none of it fits into a category. And most of the gods’ powers are recognizable. So I don’t know.”

He was overdoing it. His gestures were flustered, and the words sounded like he had rehearsed them. I guess other people may not have noticed, but I grinned to think that I knew him so well.

“You’re lying.”

He looked at me again, then sighed. “Okay, so I have an idea.”

“And you’re not going to tell me, are you?” I fidgeted with the hem of my shirt, picked at the wood grain of the planks we were sitting on, and tried my best to look uninterested. 

He didn’t fall for it. “No,” he said firmly “And to be frank, you’d better hope I’m wrong.”

“But what if you’re right?” I asked, worried now by the determination and the concern in his voice. 

“That’s just it, I’m not sure if she’ll ever claim you. She’s known to be--” He scowled and clamped his mouth shut, as if pondering a bad memory.

I didn’t bother Nico about it anymore, knowing that he wouldn’t tell me any more. But his idea, and that look, pestered me throughout the rest of what could have been a perfect day. Nico and I roamed around camp, remembering the days when he was still only literally in my dreams. He even had me ignore the rules and sit with him at dinner, probably because he and Chiron wanted to keep an eye on me but I didn’t care. I sank into my covers that night almost perfectly happy.

Then, some time a little while before morning, I woke to somebody knocking on the window. I groaned and rolled over, wishing whoever it was would go away. The knocking got louder. “Kate! Get up!”

I bolted into a sitting position. That was Nico’s voice, and he sounded worried.

Jumping out of bed, I pulled on some jeans and opened the door quietly. Nico stood right outside, rocking back and forth on his feet impatiently. As soon as he saw me he turned and jerked his head toward the Big House. “We have to go talk to Chiron,” he said, “come on.”

I jogged to catch up and walked beside him, taking quick strides to match his long ones. His hands were in his pockets, and his gaze straight ahead. I watched his determined expression and crossed my fingers, forcing myself to speak up. “What is it?”

He looked at me, then took my hand and pulled me toward the house. “I figured it out. We need to get out of here before you get claimed."


	17. Chapter 17

“Get out of here? Why?” He was almost pulling me over, dragging us both onto the Big House porch. Nico attacked the doorbell.

“It’s hard to explain,” he said, “but I know why your monsters are different, I know everything.” He turned back to the door and cursed the centaur under his breath.

“Hang on, they’re not my monsters!” 

“Yeah, okay, whatever,” he said, ignoring me. “Chiron! Let us in!”

I heard hoofs behind the door and Chiron opened it, his eyes concerned. Nico pulled me inside with him and closed the door. 

“What is it?” Chiron asked.

Nico took a deep breath and looked around the room. “Where’s the wine dude?” he whispered.

“In the kitchen.”

Nico cursed again. “We don’t have much time, then. We need to leave. Is there still a quest stash in one of the vans?” Chiron’s face was blank, and Nico stepped in front of me, as though to protect me from Chiron’s reaction to whatever he was going to say. “I did some research. What we talked about, it’s--”

The centaur looked confused, then his eyes fliched to my face, as though finally registering my presence. All at once his puzzled expression melted into a determined mask. “Is she--?”

Nico nodded.

Chiron reached back to absentmindedly pull a green foam roller out of his tail. “What do you need?”

“Just cover for us as long as you can.” Nico turned to pull me out the door.

“Wait!” Chiron stopped us. “You can’t go with her. Let me send somebody else, someone who--”

Nico whirled on Chiron and for a moment his eyes made me want to hide. “Why? Because I’m too young? Because Olympus doesn’t trust me, or you don’t? There’s no time.” His voice went dangerously low. “The last time I let somebody I cared about leave this place without me, my sister died.” He turned his back on the centaur and grabbed my hand. “I’m going.”

I was still facing Chiron, who seemed to know better than to argue. He opened his mouth, but the door opened. Mr. D walked in with a plate of Thai food and a deck of cards. The camp director glanced at me, then grumbled, “now who claims their brat in the middle--” he trailed off, frowning at something over my head.

I looked up and yelped. Above my head floated something flaming green and purple. It moved with my head, so I didn’t make it out, but Nico did. He and Chiron stood for a moment, dumbstruck, then the centaur chuckled mirthlessly. “Yes, but for this particular goddess, Kate had the perfect audience.” He put one hand on my shoulder and one on Nico’s. Nico squeezed my hand. 

“Find her father,” Chiron muttered. “And hurry!”

Nico pulled me out the door, and we sprinted toward Cabin Eleven. The rest of the Hermes cabin was still asleep, so he and I tiptoed around, packing up my things quickly while I fired question after question at him in a hushed voice.

“Why are we leaving?”

“So you don’t get killed,” he muttered, grabbing a flashlight from another camper’s bunk. I apologized in my head to Jeffrey, a little Asian kid who was terrible at pegasus riding.

“Why would I be killed?” I tried to ask, but Nico just shook his head and covered my mouth. I tugged his hand away and tried another approach. “What goddess were you and Chiron talking about?”

He wouldn’t answer that, either. We ran to a little lot with three vans parked in a row. Nico hurried to open the back of the first one, but I beat him there and stood in front of the doors. Nico stared at me. “We have to go!”

Pretty sure this was the worst possible time to do this, I shook my head. “I’m not going to be Harry Potter in this situation. You’ve got to explain something! I thought being claimed was a good thing!”

“Usually it is, but in your case-- we don’t have time for this!” Irritated, he tried to get past me to the latch. 

I didn’t budge. “I’m not walking into this blind!” I insisted. I didn’t care if I sounded like a little kid.

Nico took a deep breath, then sighed. Unbelievably gently, he put both hands on my shoulders. He was six inches away and his voice was soft. “I know that none of this makes sense right now, but I promise that as soon as we get out of camp boundaries I’m going to explain everything. Okay?”

I frowned at him, which was hard to do when his eyes were so kind. “Promise?” 

He nodded.

Sighing, I turned around and opened the trunk of the van. It was empty.

The next one, however, was full of duffle bags and boxes of energy bars and bottled water and rolled sleeping bags. Climbing in to load in my bag, it occurred to me how wrong this was. Quests didn’t happen like this-- I had never seen one, but I had heard stories. There were three in a quest, and they were sent off with a hero’s farewell. They didn’t steal away in the dead of night. 

Nico beckoned me into the front seat, and I tossed my cell phone onto the dashboard. Nico’s eyes went wide and he reached over, popped the battery out of my Blackberry and put it back. Starting the van, he said, “only for emergencies, okay?”

I didn’t even nod, just stared at him until we crossed the camp boundary. Even then I could tell he wasn’t ready to talk, just glance over his shoulder every once in a while and take really fast breaths.

Finally he seemed to calm down, slowly and with effort. Sighing, Nico relaxed a little in his seat and turned to me. “We’re good now. Well, far from good, but-- whatever. What do you want to know?”

Now I wasn’t ready, not ready to plunge into a conversation that would change so much. So I said the only thing that didn’t stop dead in my throat. “You didn’t tell me you knew how to drive.”

He stared at me for a second, then actually smiled, looking back at the road. “I’m technically a lot older than you think I am.”

And if instead of what Nico told me next, he had said he was a vampire, my reaction probably would have been about the same.


	18. Chapter 18

“Hecate?” I repeated. “The name sounds kind of familiar, but I don’t remember. Why?”

Nico raised his eyebrows. “Represented anything from crossroads to ghosts during Ancient Greece? Though,” he added, almost to himself, “the American version has become pretty-- focused.”

“On?”

“Magic.”

I bit my lip, sitting on the edge of the worn upholstered seat. “And that’s my father?”

Nico let out a short laugh, his voice full of grim amusement. “No. As far as I can tell, your father is the son of some major god. I don’t know who yet.”

“Then--”

“-- your mom,” he interrupted, “is Hecate.”

I just stared at him. His eyes were dark, half-closed, blurred like they always looked in my dreams when he had been visiting some ghost, chasing some lead that might tell him about his past. The weather had been getting warmer every day, but his skin was even paler than it had been when I had arrived at Camp Half-Blood. He looked like death itself. “So how does that work?”

He still didn’t look at me, passing a big blue Suburban (the exact car that my mom drove. I tried not to jump up and see if there was a BUY LOCAL sticker on the back). “It’s not supposed to,” Nico finally replied. Looking back up at me, he sighed and pulled a few printed sheets of paper out of his bag, setting them down on the seat between us. They were full of sections of Greek myths, and on one page was the Wikipedia article for Hecate. 

“It took me forever to find any information on a demigod with powers like yours,” he continued. “That’s when I figured out that that was because they’re so rare. Or because they all died young.” He chuckled in the same grim way. “I mean, if Percy thinks he’s the child of forbidden love he has no idea. There are unwritten laws, almost impossible to find they’re so ancient, about a god having a child with a demigod. You don’t even want to know about the whole Zeus fiasco,” he said with a wince.

“Hang on, did you say they all died young?” I interrupted him.

His fingers clenched tight around the wheel and he talked faster. “They’re not even technically demigods. One article calls them dodransgods, which is probably made up, but it literally means ‘three-fourths god’. Nobody knows the extent of their powers.”

“You just said,” I insisted. “People like me died young. How young?”

He looked at me, dread in his eyes. “You’ve outlived all of them but one.”

There was something heavy in my stomach then, but I managed to ask, “how’d they die?”

Resigned, Nico pulled one sheet of paper back over to glance at it. “I could only find accounts of four different cases. One little kid died in an accident, and the rest--” he carefully avoided my eyes. “Three were executed.” He dropped the paper and put his hand, shaky, back on the wheel. “At Olympus.”

It was a while before I could say anything. Finally I looked back toward the window and forced the word out. “Why?”

Nico took a deep breath and handed me another piece of paper, so yellowed and cracked that I could hardly read the words.

It was a newspaper article. The date and location weren’t legible, but the headline described a tornado that had formed, wiped out an entire small town, and disappeared. The only survivor was a seventeen year old boy. His picture was included in the story, and I started hyperventilating. He had brown eyes, but his hair-- his hair was in bright orange curls exactly like mine.

I dropped the clipping onto the floorboards of the van. The boy, a boy who looked so alive for one who was so long dead, stared up at me from under my foot. 

“They’re all in articles like that. Natural disasters, explosions. A little girl showed up right after an entire campsite, like three square miles, completely vanished. A ghost of a park ranger told me all about it. Each of them are sighted for the last time soon after in New York--”

“At the Empire State Building,” I finished for him, and he just nodded. It was still so bizarre to me that Olympus was based in such a prominent location, but Nico had reminded me (in a sarcastic tone) that the gods had at least a little pride. I frowned. “So, the gods are scared I might screw up their little heaven they’ve got going on up there?”

He shook his head. “They’re not afraid you might do something destructive. They know you will.”

“What are you talking about? You really think I could wipe out my hometown with my own personal tornado?” I demanded. I had twisted my heel on the newspaper clipping and it was crumpling. The red-haired boy’s face was torn in half now.

He allowed himself half a smile. “It is so like you to get angry about this. But don’t be stupid, Kate. Every single time this has happened there’s been some huge disaster. You know I’m not one to defend the gods’ actions, but think about it! They’re going to feel fully justified in what they do to you if they find you.”

“And explain to me how you’re helping! We’re in a fracking strawberry van!” My voice was louder than I had meant it to be, but I just sat there with my arms crossed. Demolishing redhead boy’s face.

“When was the last time you drank water?” Nico asked suddenly.

I looked up. “What?”

He looked away from the road for a second to grab a bottle of water from his bag. “Drink this,” he said, “and then talk to me.” Handing it to me, he turned back to the wheel with an expression that I could not call anything but a smirk.

I punched him in the arm and he stuck out his tongue. When you are stuck with a person for an hour every night, you tend to learn things about them that not many other people do. In this case, Nico was one of the few, along with my mother and my gym teacher, who were aware that I lived in a state of almost perpetual dehydration. That certain necessity to life, water, just held no attraction to me. When I was little, Mom would stand over me as I drank two glasses of water before I was allowed to complain about anything. I tended to complain when I didn’t drink water. So even these days I tended to complain a lot. 

Still glaring at him, I chugged the bottle because I really was thirsty. Then I took a deep breath and tried to rephrase my previous question. “So what’s the plan?”

Nico was turning again, and waited until he stopped signaling to answer me. “Chiron thinks the best thing to do is find your father. Who knows how much he can tell us about your mom and anything we can find to make the gods reconsider killing you on sight. You were sent to a safe house, so there’s a chance he suspected you might turn out powerful, even without the whole sleeping with the goddess of magic thing.”

“Ugh,” I said. “You make it sound so weird.”

Nico shrugged. “If it helps, I don’t think he knew. She probably didn’t know either, for that matter. Hecate is unpredictable and pretty crazy, but she’s not stupid. She knows what could happen to her if Olympus found out.”

“She could be punished?” I hadn’t thought about this.

“Oh, yeah. Having a three-fourths god is bad news for everybody involved. They can’t really kill her, but there’s a good chance they’d make her life living hell.” He looked at me. “That’s actually one of the reasons I figured it out so quickly. Those monsters you’re being attacked by-- they don’t exist. Hecate is one of the only ones who could create a creature like that and send it after you.”

I stared at him. “She’s trying to kill me?”


	19. Chapter 19

He didn’t respond, so I turned completely toward him in my seat and repeated it. “She’s. Trying. To. Kill. Me?”

Nico bit his lip. “I don’t want to believe it, but as far as I can tell, your creepy Great Dane friend and the spiders are her creations. And if you think about it, she tried as hard as she could to get rid of you, and then she finally claimed you only when a god was looking straight at you. She wants to make sure nobody finds out what you are.”

“Of course,” I muttered. “Of course when I finally get out of the middle of nowhere, my own fracking mother tries to hunt me down!”

Still without looking at me, Nico frowned. “This is exactly how I expected you to take this.”

“How exactly was I supposed to take it?” I demanded, shouting again.

“Can you not be ‘book five’ Harry Potter right now?” Nico asked, finally looking at me with an expression I didn’t recognize. “Hecate is being threatened-- she’s bound to react. She doesn’t know you, and--”

“I’m her daughter! And you know, for hating the gods so much, it sure sounds like you’re defending them.”

Nico looked around, even though it was just him and me in the van on a highway I didn’t know. “Hate is a pretty strong word,” he said, his voice like a warning.

“Yeah, well there are about to be a whole lot more strong words--” my voice was getting louder with every second until it finally burst with the only other thing I could think of to say. “Where the hell are we even going, anyway?”

Nico didn’t look at me. “There’s a safe house in Oregon. Chiron wants us to find your dad, and we’ve already figured out he probably lives somewhere in the northwest, so that’s where we’ll head.”

I nodded at my reflection in the window.

Nico reached over and tapped my knee. “Hey, why aren’t you freaking out at me for not telling you about all this earlier?”

I looked at him and couldn’t help a little smile. “Well, that’s totally something ‘fifth-book’ Harry would do, isn’t it?”

He chuckled. “Yeah, I guess. But I seriously thought that was the thing you’d be the most pissed off about.”

Shrugging, I tried to keep my voice light. “You told me just now. And besides, I can’t exactly ream out the only person who’s trying to help.”

He frowned. “That’s very-- forgiving of you.”

I just stuck out my tongue and listened to my stomach complain. “God, I’m starving,” I muttered, and glanced at Nico. “Gods?”

He laughed and gestured to the back seat. “I think I saw some protein bars back there or something.”

Raising my eyebrows, I stared at him and he laughed. “Yeah, you’re right. We have to get far away right now, but we’ll stop when we can. Panda Express?”

“Damn right, Panda Express.”

I ended up caving and inhaling a peanut butter energy bar before we finally got far enough away from the camp and stopped.

Poking around my orange chicken in its Styrofoam container, I looked at Nico, who was smiling for real for the first time since we had passed camp boundaries. He looked up from his food and grinned at me. Aware that this was the most ridiculous time to think it, I couldn’t stop the thought crossing my mind that he had ditched everything and run away with me to try and keep me safe. Considering how many people he had lost and the friends he had left behind, this idea tugged at the corners of my mouth.

“What’re you thinking?” he asked.

I shrugged and turned over a piece of fried goodness. “Just glad you’re here.”

He gave me another half smile and twirled his fork, keeping his eyes on mine. Now my stomach felt like there was electricity crackling through it instead of butterflies. Of course just liking someone had to be difficult, too. This wasn’t exactly my week.

His expression was the perfect mixture of sad and teasing, so I looked around the parking lot and asked, “so do you think we’ll get any contact from Chiron?”

“I doubt it. He’s probably using all the resources he can to keep Mr. D off us, and I’m starting to think that might not work for very long either.”

“Awesome,” I muttered. “What will he do when he figures it out?”

“He might call a council meeting, or he might keep it quiet because you were under his nose for two weeks.” Nico shrugged. “We’ll just have to do our best and hope that Chiron can do something to slow them down.”

I put my plastic fork down and sighed. “So we’re sitting ducks.”

Nico shook his head. “We’re ducks driving to Oregon and doing whatever we can to keep you alive,” he insisted, and started the car. I gathered up our trash and ran it to the dumpster while Nico fiddled with the radio, flipping through the channels. I heard a snatch of a familiar song and grabbed the dial, sort-of-accidentally brushing my fingers with his while I tried to find the channel that had been playing my favorite song from Paramore. 

He looked at me, pulled his hand away as quickly as he could and I could have sworn he blushed as he backed out of the Panda Express parking lot.


	20. Chapter 20

I wasn’t sure how much time had passed when I woke up. It was dark, and Italian opera buzzed from the van’s radio. Passing headlights lit up Nico’s face, and for a moment I saw what everybody else saw when they looked at him: dark clothes, tired eyes, the determination on his face so powerful it was bordering on scary. 

But then he looked at me, and I liked better the Nico I saw. He gave me a tired smile and tucked his leather jacket higher onto my shoulder. I only realized then that it was draped over me, smelling like him and warding off the chill of late winter. I had grown accustomed to the controlled weather at Camp Half-Blood.

“I was just about to get off the highway. There’s a rest area and I thought we could use a break.”

I nodded sleepily and sat up, keeping the jacket across my shoulders. Our surroundings seemed less urban, but that was all I knew, being from the west coast and having no useful knowledge of anything past Oregon.

Nico, however, seemed to know where we were going. He took the next exit and soon we were in an almost-deserted parking lot. A tired-looking family with a dog were stumbling to the bathrooms and one big truck idled in the corner of the lot. Nico cranked the heater up and climbed in the back of the van to grab a sleeping bag and an energy bar. He handed the sleeping bag to me and I handed him his jacket. “Lock the car. I’ll be right back,” he said, and slipped out in almost creepy silence. 

I was dying to call my brother, but the cold and my promise to Nico made me curl up in the seat instead, pulling the sleeping bag over me and cranking up the strange music. I didn’t know much about Nico’s family, but I was pretty sure his mother was Italian, and this vague glimpse into his mind made my chest feel tight and warm.

Not like my toes, though. It was freezing, no matter how hard the van’s heater and the thick sleeping bag tried to fight against the chilly air. It almost seemed to me that I had felt warmer with his jacket, and him nearby. I pulled the flashlight out of the trunk and carefully lifted the torn newspaper clippings from the floorboards. Smoothing them out, I perused accounts of crazy ‘natural’ disasters, of kids and teenagers who destroyed stretches of highway and entire towns. The photos that showed their hair the exact shade of red as mine made me feel sick. 

I wanted to crumple every single bit of paper and throw them out the window, as though that would help me to forget the truths in them. I wouldn’t let myself consider the possibility of Nico being mistaken. In my heart I knew he wasn’t, and I didn’t want to imagine myself safe with my family because I didn’t want to imagine my family. It was way too hard.

But the images of their faces crept into my memory anyway, and I closed my eyes to get rid of them. The pictures were just sharper in the darkness. Soon my eyes stung, and I was finally crying instead of yelling. The release of tears was not enough to chase the heaviness in my heart and in my eyelids. I slipped back into sleep as easily as I had come out of it, and my thoughts went peacefully, blissfully silent. 

Then Nico shook me awake. A look outside said that it couldn’t be any more than an hour later, and his expression was apologetic. 

“Hey,” I mumbled, pushing my hair out of my face. 

“Hey,” he said, looking around and looking a little concerned. “We’re moving a lot faster than I thought we were.”

I frowned and sat up straight, hoping to all the gods that that was a good thing. “What does that mean?”

He looked around the parking lot like he was worried we were being followed. “Not sure, but somehow we’re already almost out of Ohio, and that’s definitely not normal. There’s probably something going on--”

“But right now we’re safe,” I interrupted him, studying his face.

He nodded, reluctantly. “And I guess all we can do is keep driving.” He put his seatbelt on, and the circles under his eyes seemed darker than usual. I pulled the sleeping bag tighter and kept watching him, wondering what was going on behind his worried expression. Leaving the rest stop and getting back on the highway we had been travelling before we stopped, I rested my forehead on the cold window, looking out into the night. A few minutes later I was mildly surprised to find words coming out of my mouth.

“Two demigods on the run. They are pretty screwed. They need someone awesome’s help.”

Nico’s head jerked around in surprise. He almost swerved off the road, and corrected the course of the van without taking his eyes off mine. “What did you just say?”

I shook my head hard, both at the terrible poetry and the fact that the words hadn’t come from my own mind. “I think it was supposed to be a haiku,” I muttered.

Nico wrinkled his nose, a face that reminded me of him when he was twelve and scared and obsessed with a really confusing card game. “Well, it sucked.”

Suddenly there was a snort behind my head, and a voice from the back seat said, “oh, and I’d like to see you do better!”

My expression was a mixture of terror and confusion when I twisted around to look into the back seat and watched a man with stringy hair unwrapping one of our peanut butter energy bars.   
Nico looked resigned as he slowly turned to the greasy hobo eating our food. He sighed. “What’re you doing here, Fred?"


	21. Chapter 21

The old hobo clicked his tongue. “Nah, can’t be called Fred anym--” He took a closer look at Nico. 

Nico chuckled grimly. “I wasn’t there, but Percy told me all about it. So what are you doing here?”

The stranger shook his head, looking out the window as he unwrapped a second bar. “I shouldn’t even be here, but as far as I know I’m the only one who’s going to help you.”

I turned around completely in my seat, looking at the man’s surprisingly bright blue eyes. His hair was dirty but looked like it could be blond. I frowned. “Um, with all due respect, who the Hades are you?”

Nico snorted at my attempt towards Camp Half-Blood terminology. “Nice try,” he muttered.

The stranger gave me a strange look, studying my face for several seconds. Then he looked at Nico, who took a deep breath and glanced at me. Then, eyes were back the road, he nodded toward our hitchhiker in the back seat. “Kate, this is the Lord Apollo,” he introduced in a careful voice. 

I stared at the man sitting behind me. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said with a wink, transforming into a college-age guy with a flash of a smile and shiny blond hair. Everything about him seemed bright, like you could be blinded if you looked at him from the wrong angle.

Then came the thought that the hobo inhaling my energy bars was totally hot, followed quickly by the realization that the hot hobo was probably also my uncle or something. I shuddered.

“So, that’s why we’ve been moving so quickly?” Nico asked. He was still driving, but the car seemed to change lanes and zip past traffic on its own even when Nico wasn’t moving the wheel. 

Apollo shrugged. “I figured I might help out a little. I’ve been cooped up in Olympus for too long, and I won’t ever turn my nose up at rest stop food.”

Nico just nodded, but I couldn’t help watching the sun god, suspicious. Not making any attempt to soften my question, I turned to Nico. “Didn’t you say any god who found out about me would probably try to haul me back for execution?”

“No, they’d kill you on the spot.” He sounded alarmingly calm about the whole thing. 

I looked at Apollo. “Then why are you even here? Not to mention that you’re helping me run away--”

Apollo gave me the same funny look, then cleared his throat, looking out the window at the passing cars. “You know, you’re right, maybe that wasn’t my best haiku. I did make it up in five minutes.”

I rolled my eyes. “You think? Gods, I wrote haikus when I was ten and they were all better than that one! I mean, ‘they are pretty screwed’? You don’t even have the syllables right.”

The god in our back seat scratched the back of his head. “Yeah, I always seem to have a problem with that. Anyway, you should be in Oregon in another day or two. I’ve gotta go make an appearance back at Olympus, but if you need help just call. I’ll be around.”

With that, he was gone.

I spent the next five minutes staring at Nico, trying to get him to make eye contact with me. The boy in the driver’s seat seemed very focused on the road in front of us, but after a while he sighed and looked at me. “What?”

“What. Just. Happened.”

Nico kind of chuckled. “Yeah, he is a bit of a jock type, isn’t he?”

I kept staring, trying to avoid making a joke about a hot sun god that would no doubt be nowhere near as good as it sounded in my head. “Not that! He wouldn’t tell me why he’s helping us.”

Nico just kept looking at the road, like he hadn’t even heard me. Studying his face, I frowned. “And now there’s something you’re not telling me.”

Nico tightened his fingers around the steering wheel. “Why do you have to be so good at that?”

I just raised my eyebrows, and he gave me an apologetic look. “I can’t tell you. I really can’t--”

“Don’t you think this something it’d be kind of important for me to know?”

“Someone made me swear on the River Styx, Kate,” Nico pleaded. “I wish I could tell you, but there’s nothing I can do!”

I slumped with a groan back into my seat and glared out the window. “What would happen if you broke that?”

He sighed. “Bad things.”

I nodded and opened one of the few peanut butter bars left, stared at it, then carefully tucked it back into the foil wrapper and put it in the cup holder. 

I wished I could curse under my breath but couldn’t think of something bad enough for what I was feeling. I made a mental note to ask Annabeth about Greek curse words when we got back. 

I didn’t want to sleep, so I concentrated on the mile markers that whipped by. I remembered a road trip a long time ago with my grandparents, when my brothers and I were fighting over the Bop-It, and finally my grandpa decided we had to take turns, passing it to the next kid every time we saw the mile marker. I hadn’t even known what they were, just numbers to label the chorus of groans and a brother handing over a game I didn’t really even want to play, just insisted on an equal turn because it was just fair. 

Thirty four miles later, Nico switched on the radio, but we were too far from any town. He left it on anyway, the static replacing the silence that had long ago replaced any reason or logic or explanation for what was happening.


	22. Chapter 22

We were flying at Apollo-assisted speeds down the highway when I looked away from the window at Nico, trying to chase down a thought that had just flashed through my mind.

While I tried to remember what I had been thinking, I watched the face of the boy next to me. The circles under his eyes were even darker than usual, and he looked gray and tired in the lights of the occasional passing car.

“Hey,” I finally said, and it took him a minute to look at me. He blinked several times. I chuckled. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I think they call it highway hypnosis-- and I’m just trying to think. What’s up?”

I looked back out the window at the darkness, yellow traffic signs zipping past like visions in the night. “Have you dreamed at all?”

“What do you mean?”

I sorted the thoughts in my head, and tried to force my already overworked brain to put them in logical sentences. “I mean, since I got to camp. As soon as I started seeing you in real life, the dreams stopped. Did you notice?”

Nico frowned. “No, I guess I didn’t. I guess that we just didn’t have to anymore.”

“Huh.” I looked at Nico, half expecting him to say something, but he was silent and thoughtful, and definitely looking more tired than he had a few days ago. 

After a few more moments of silence, I spoke up again. “You didn’t answer the question the first time I asked. Did we ever figure out why the dreams started?”

Nico shrugged. “I guess I always just assumed it was a weird demigod thing. Like, links between people who would need each other later on in life?”

I ignored the way my chest seemed to tighten at his use of the word ‘need’. “But it seemed like it started up right when you figured out who you were, and I had no idea what was going on. And the fact that they stopped as soon as we met in real life, it almost seems like somebody wanted us to know each other.”

Nico nodded stiffly. “I guess so.”

I looked at him a little harder. Yes, he was tired, and sure, I did tend to go on and on aloud about things I was trying to figure out in my head, but normally he humored me. Right now he sounded downright uninterested in what might be a major clue to what was going on.

“Why are you being so indifferent about this?” I asked, and regretted it as soon as the words left my mouth. He seemed stretched so thin, and just because I’d never seen him snap before didn’t mean there wasn’t a point where he might.

But Nico just sighed, and glanced at me before looking back at the road. “I guess that I don’t like the idea of us knowing each other because somebody else thought that we should. The gods already screw around with so many things in this world already. It seems like there’s got to be something they can keep their hands out of.” He sighed again. “Maybe it’s just that it seems like so many things are already preordained. I don’t want to think about us being someone else’s idea.”

The ‘us’ and the ‘need’ were teaming up to make me want to hit my forehead against the window until it shattered. I wondered if he knew that I was picking apart everything he said, trying to discern whether he thought with the words he was using, why he chose to come with me, why somebody thought our lives would be better if we knew each other. Not that they weren’t. I couldn’t even let myself stop to imagine that maybe my life would be normal, back at home with my family that wasn’t my blood, if I hadn’t already suspected the world around me of not being the way that it seemed. Be things as screwed up as they may, I couldn’t imagine a life without Nico in it.


	23. Chapter 23

We pulled over at a grimy little convenience store in Iowa that reminded me of the one on the corner by my school. I went inside to restock our energy bars and chips, which had run out sometime while we were driving through Indiana-- a few hours ago. Apollo seemed to be speeding us up even more now, like he was as anxious as I was about getting us to Oregon. 

Grabbing a bag of Cheezits for me and Oreos for Nico, I gave the man behind the counter a nervous smile. I had started to get the feeling that every person I made eye contact with knew what a freak I was, that according to history I could blow up an entire city block if I wasn’t careful. I even felt it when I caught Nico looking at me, a darkness behind his eyes, like despite  
all the things he said to make me feel better, he was a little scared, too. 

But the potbellied man just straightened his sweaty visor and kept watching the TV on the ceiling while I dumped all our junk food on the counter and pulled out some of the cash that had been stowed away in the van’s glove compartment. The cashier took the bills from my hand and glanced out the window. “You guys on a field trip or something?”

I frowned and followed his gaze out the window, my eyes landing on a familiar-looking van. One side of it was plastered with the fake logo from camp, advertising strawberry picking. My eyebrows furrowed. We had parked around back.

I watched five familiar teenagers climb out of the van. Cursing under my breath, I turned to find Nico appearing right behind me, grabbing my arm. “We have to go!” he said, and ducked behind the shelves full of overpriced sunglasses and glass unicorns.

Nico and I crouched down, sneaking around the back of the store. The other campers obviously didn’t know we were here. They were chatting about snacks and some joke George had made on the road. Percy had his arm around Annabeth’s shoulders. 

I stared at the little mermaid statuettes on the shelf right in front of my eyes, breathing fast. 

“Did Mr. D send them after us?”

Nico peeked around the aisle again, frowning. “I doubt that he told them what’s going on, but there’s no other reason for all of them to be here.”

“What do we do?” I asked. Percy was walking toward us, but he veered at the last second and went to the wall of drinks for a blue Gatorade. Nico, whose head was right over my shoulder, sighed relief and I felt it on the back of my neck. I turned toward him, our faces almost colliding. 

He settled back onto his heels, and I crossed my fingers. "Maybe we can talk to them."

Nico shrugged. "Percy might understand, but we couldn't tell any of the others."

"Not even Annabeth?"

Nico shook his head, watching Annabeth pick every single piece of blue candy off the shelves with a secret smile on her face. "No."

He saw my frown, and explained, "Tactics. She's still a daughter of Athena, and keeping you alive wouldn't exactly be a strategically sound move."

"Oh."

"We could just show ourselves. Make up a story."

It was my turn to shake my head. "Angela. She'll be able to tell if we're lying to her."

Nico muttered a curse, and watched as the campers sat down at a grimy table near the window. 

They were chatting less, watching the windows tensely. I felt my eyebrows rise as I realized something. "They're waiting for us."

"Huh?" Nico had been scanning for exits.

"They look like they're waiting. And, I mean, we're moving a lot faster than we should be- how are they travelling so fast?"

Nico nodded. "That is a very good question. But let's worry about getting out of here first, yeah?"

I nodded like a little kid being corrected by a teacher, and ducked lower as George looked our way. "Could you shadow travel?"

Nico closed his eyes for a second, and sighed. A sliver of sarcasm crept into his voice. "No, I'm too tired. You see, normal demigods lose energy when they use their- “

He trailed off, and a look dawned on his face. He stared at me. "Try it."

I frowned, looking around. "I thought shadow travel was a Hades thing."

He gave a surprised laugh. "Yeah, and beauty illusions are an Aphrodite thing, and your teleporting isn't a thing at all. Try it."

I bit my lip, rocking back on my heels. Even with my eyes closed, I could feel his gaze, disapproving and anxious, burning in my cheeks.

I imagined the van around us, imagined sitting in the passenger seat next to Nico. The image started to sharpen, but then, as though from far away, I heard Angela's voice, and felt Nico start to his feet beside me.

My eyes flew open and I was still crouched next to the Band-Aids and condoms.

Angela was standing at the end of the aisle, her sentence to George cut off as soon as she spotted us.

There was one beat, a bag of jelly beans dangling from Angela's fingers, and then George came around the corner to tell her to finish her sentence. He froze. "Kate."

I scrambled to my feet to stand beside Nico. I could almost see the gears turning behind his eyes, trying to figure out what to do next.

Angela and George didn't call for Percy or Annabeth. Something had caught them by surprise, and they just stood there, bags of snacks dangling from limp fingers. After a few more seconds of silence, Angela took a step toward us. "What are you doing here?"

I frowned at Nico. He was looking at the two, and then his eyes widened as Percy came walking around the corner.

Percy uncapped the pen in his hand, and a bronze blade sprang out. I raised my eyebrows, but Nico just took a careful step toward the campers. "Percy, just let us go."

The taller boy stared at his friend. "Mr. D sent us after campers who were going on an unauthorized quest. What is this?"

I took a deep breath, crossing my fingers behind my back and watching Angela carefully. "We're looking for my dad."

Percy frowned, but Angela didn't even blink. I held my breath, and she nodded. "Why are you looking for him?"

The breath left in a sigh of relief. I tried not to fidget, and said, "when I found out that my parents weren't really mine, I wanted to go find my real dad. Nico offered to come with me."

"Why would you risk all this to hunt down the loser who abandoned you?" 

I stared at George. "He's my dad- wouldn't you?"

A shadow passed across George's usually cheerful face. "Personally, I'd leave him to rot."

Nico spoke up from beside me, but still sounded surprised at my lie. "Percy, you crossed the country once to find your mom, didn't you?"

"That was different," said Annabeth, who seemed to appear out of nowhere. I thought I saw her tuck a baseball cap into her back pocket. "That was an authorized quest to take back Zeus's lightning bolt, which was a matter of worldwide importance," she insisted.

I blinked at her, uncrossing my fingers to put my hands on my hips. "Listen, I like you, but it's really none of your business why I leave camp or I don't. I'm looking for my dad- that's enough importance to me."

Angela jumped forward, glaring at me. "You're lying. I don't know how I didn't feel it before- there's another reason."

My eyes tried not to go wide and I tucked crossed fingers into my pocket. "If there has to be another reason, sure, it's to get out of a camp where I sleep on the floor in the middle of a cabin full of people going through obnoxious teenage identity crises."

Angela frowned, but didn't question me, and I grinned to myself while I felt Nico staring at the back of my head.

Annabeth and Percy frowned at each other, and I whispered to Nico, so quietly I knew the others couldn't hear. "Are you recharged enough to get us out of here?"

He shook his head no and I nodded, slipping my hand into his. "Okay. Wait for it."

I looked hard at the man standing behind the counter, pressing at him with my thoughts, and muttered, "thief." He blinked a few times, and scrambled out from behind his counter, starting toward us. 

"Sorry, George," I muttered while the man pointed at the redhead, shouting, "Thief! Thief! I saw you put that in your pocket!"

The others turned toward the man, and I squeezed my eyes shut, picturing the inside of the van around us. My eyes snapped open, and the radio was hovering, transparent, in front of my eyes.

I frowned hard, ignoring the pain in my head and my warm cheeks, and the image sharpened, until we were sitting in the parking lot.

Nico opened his eyes wide, and started the car. I turned in my seat, looking back at the convenience store. "Come on, let's go!"

Nico stepped hard on the pedal, and we went hurdling out of the parking lot onto the street. He sped us to the highway, and when I glanced back the other campers were crowded out into the parking lot, staring after us, practically scratching their heads.

My head was pounding, and my skin felt like I had a high fever. The windows on my side of the van started to fog up, but I didn't feel tired. Instead, I was exhilarated, pumped up like I had just downed three cups of coffee on no breakfast. 

Nico was tapping his fingers frantically on the steering wheel. He stared at me. "Okay, how the hell?" he asked, almost yelling.

"What?"

"You just lied to Angela- you said nobody could lie to Andrea."

I shook my head. "Nobody can. I just-"

"What?"

I blinked. "I crossed my fingers."

Nico just shook his head to himself, staring hard at the highway in front of us. "And how did that cashier guy see George stealing something right when we needed to go?"

I hesitated, then shrugged. "I don't know- crazy coincidence. George is a son of Hermes, he probably did put something in his pocket."

Nico kept shaking his head like he was trying to get water out of his ears, and drummed his fingers hard against the steering wheel. "This isn't right. I thought you were just powerful. But- all this stuff is literally everything that nobody should be able to do."

I blinked at him, crossing my arms. "Okay, then. Turn around and take me to Olympus. They'll probably thank you- maybe you'll be welcome at camp for a while. That's what you want, right?  
Go on."

Nico blinked, hurt. "That's not what I meant."

I shrugged.

He kept looking in front of him. "I'm just worried."

I set my burning cheek and aching head against the cool glass pane, and quickly wiped away the single drop of blood slipping from my nose. "Don't be," I grumbled, "I'm fine."

A voice came from behind my head. "No, you're not," it said.


	24. Chapter 24

I jumped, twisting in my seat. Hobo Fred was sitting there in the back seat, but this time his face was cleanshaven, his shoulders no longer stooped and his teeth a dazzling, bright white. He opened Nico's Oreo cookies and absentmindedly popped one into his mouth.

I glared at the Lord Apollo. "Those are Nico's, not yours."

He just chuckled, chewed thoughtfully. "That was a little too close. No wonder you're falling apart- how'd you do the mind control thing? That one's new."

I blinked. "I don't know what you mean."

Apollo raised his eyebrows. "Really. Because it seems to me that you're burning the candle at all twelve ends, and your edges are getting frayed real fast." He glanced at Nico. "Have you told him yet?"

My gaze darted to Nico, who was driving calmly, but not acknowledging my conversation with the god sitting next to me. I frowned at Apollo.

He shrugged. "It's one of my specialties, remember? You're dreaming- you conked out as soon as you closed your eyes. You're exhausted."

I clambered over my seat to sit next to Apollo in the next row. "Why are you helping us?"

Apollo shrugged. "I read your poetry in middle school- decent stuff. Figured I should make sure that kind of potential didn't get wasted just because my dear cousin broke a rule."

My eyebrows shot up. "Hecate is your cousin?"

He nodded distractedly. "Yep. I guess that makes us second cousins. And here's another piece of family history- I'm your grandpa, too."

I stared at him. "What do you mean?"

He sighed. "I think this is when a movie character is supposed to say 'gods, child, you're supposed to be intelligent'. Your delight of a mother is my cousin, and-"

"My father is a son of Apollo."

Apollo sighed. "I'm right here," he said, pointing at his own face. "I swear, you all use the third person far too often- gods are people, too."

I chuckled. "Well, not really-"

"Irrelevant," he interrupted. 

I rolled my eyes. "Anyway. You're helping us because you're my grandpa."

"And your second cousin," he contributed.

"And you're speeding us on our way- out of family loyalty and the goodness of your heart?"

He raised his perfect eyebrows. Related on both sides, I reminded myself. Meanwhile, he looked out the window. "Don't sound so surprised. Unlike most of the Olympians, I know what family means. And I don't believe in stopping a person's life just because they might cause us a little trouble along the way."

I nodded. "Because you're the troublemaker, right?"

He laughed, and his words and his eyes seemed older somehow, like he was speaking from the bottom of his experience. "You're thinking of Hermes. But I only cut him slack because he's also very powerful, and he does good things when he's reminded of his-"

"Humanity?" I interrupted, smiling.

Apollo smiled back. "Ironically. And that's why I'm giving you a chance- I'm betting on you not-"

"Blowing you and all the rest of this stretch of highway into oblivion?"

He looked thoughtful. "Do you feel like you could?"

I blinked, suddenly overwhelmed by the power that was surging behind my chest. It did feel like it was pushing at the inside of me, threatening to sneak out of my bloodstream if I turned my back.

I shivered through the receding fever, and looked at the god warily, totally aware that he could incinerate me if he wanted to. "Would it scare you more if I lied, or told the truth?"

He took a deep breath. "So, yes."

I looked away from him. "I think I could, yeah. If I wanted to, and I don't usually."

He nodded like that wasn't very reassuring, and I hurried to add, "there's this wall, though. It's like I have everything I would need to self-destruct, but I'd have to take a huge sledgehammer to the dam first."

He bit his lip. "Ah, interesting. Well, I'm counting on you not to find a reason to use that way out, at least before I get a chance to withdraw my support."

I wasn't sure whether or not to smile at this or be concerned, but Apollo didn't make me. With a dramatic poof, he vanished, leaving me sitting for another hour or so in the dream, calm in the passenger seat, and with an entire hour to watch the bags grow under Nico's eyes.


	25. Chapter 25

Waking up was strange. I was still sitting in the front seat of the van, but when I opened my eyes, the image didn't sharpen. Instead, the colors were duller. I sat up straight. Reaching over, I shook Nico out of his highway hypnosis. "Take the next exit. You're worn out."

He shook his head. "I'm fine, really. It's the whole half-dead thing- we need to get to Oregon."

"Yeah, nice try," I said with a laugh, gently pushing the wheel to turn off the highway.

Nico drove us to the nearest motel (with some help from the signs we could see from an overpass). We checked in with some of the money from the glove compartment, and packed two of the duffel bags into the grimy little room, leaving the other one sitting in the back of the van.

We piled into our room, and Nico collapsed immediately on the couch. I ordered a pizza with the landline, took a shower, and came out into the room to sit on the bed and watch the TV on mute.  
Nico slept for several hours. I still felt wired, but under it all, deep in my chest, I was exhausted. My eyes were stuck open, but it felt like my heart was struggling to pump blood and like the gears in my mind were starting to grind to a crawl. I considered waking Nico up to take a watch, but I just thought of his tired eyes while I had watched him in the van. Apollo must have meant for me to see that, so I blinked the sleep out of my eyes and kept staring at the television.

Eventually, after the pizza had come and I had put most of it in the fridge, Nico stirred. He woke up slowly, bleary-eyed and looking around the room like he didn't know where he was.

"Any dreams?" I blurted out.

He blinked at me. "What?"

I thought of Apollo again, then of the blissful darkness that had come with sleep during my weeks at camp. "Last time I asked, you didn't answer me. Do you have any more dreams? Since you dreamed about me, I mean."

His cheeks got a little red, but he shrugged. "Demigods dream a lot. They're usually visions, what's going on somewhere else or what could happen."

I raised my eyebrows. "You have dreams about what's going to happen on this quest?"

"It's hardly a quest," he corrected me with a dry laugh. "But yeah, sometimes I get glimpses of monsters we've met, some flashes of what's ahead." He frowned at me. "You don't?"

I shook my head. "No, just Apollo."

Nico stood from the couch immediately, coming over to the bed. He sat gingerly on the edge. "Apollo spoke to you again last night?"

"More like this morning, but yeah," I said, pulling my knees up to my chin. "We had a fascinating chat about family trivia."

Nico frowned.

"Like, oh, say, my dad is one of his sons," I said, raising an eyebrow.

He leaned forward, wrinkling his forehead. "What?"

"Yeah. Hecate is my mother and Apollo is my grandfather."

"And second cousin," Nico added, and I nodded. "So that's why he's helping us," Nico continued, standing up off the bed and starting to pace the room. Then, out of nowhere, he muttered a curse in Greek. "I'd been hoping the other side was some more peaceful god. Demeter, or Janus, or somebody."

"Well, it's Apollo," I cut in, a little coldly. He was talking about me like I was some Frankenstein's monster of different ancient Greek entities.

"Yeah, but Apollo's too strong. This is getting worse and worse."

I raised an eyebrow. "You're telling me."

Nico looked worried, but didn't say a word.

I took a breath, then fidgeted on the bed. "Do you think he's messing with us? That's one thing the gods are good at, right?"

Nico didn't like that thought, but after a moment he shook his head. "Apollo's all right. He's a little flighty, but he's always been defensive of the things close to him."

I scrambled off the bed, moving absentmindedly to go to the fridge and take out a few pieces of pizza. I fashioned a plate out of the lid of the box and put the pizza on it. "He practically said that it was because he's always looking for new investment opportunities." I said the last bit in a mock enthusiastic tone, like I was doing a sales pitch. 

Nico just rolled his eyes. "He's a fan of doing the unexpected, that's for sure."

I held up the cardboard plate. "Cold or warm?"

Nico wrinkled his nose. "Warm. Are you crazy?"

I made a face right back at him. "Cold pizza is the best," I countered, opening the microwave. We've never had one of them at home, so I just punched a few buttons and hoped for the best. 

I moved around the room restlessly, packing all my things back into my duffel bag, and then I kicked my shoes out from under the bed, sitting down to put them on.

Nico looked down at me. "What are you doing?"

"Just going to go get some ice, and snacks from the car. I need to get out of this room."

His eyes went wide, and he swung his legs off the bed. They didn't even dangle like mine, just met the floor smoothly and started walking across the floor toward me. "Okay, now I know you're crazy. You can't go out there. Percy and the others could be right behind us!"

"Maybe that's good!" Giving it a second thought, my mind wasn't slowing down. The gears were speeding up, my thoughts moving too fast. It felt like the smallest thing could jam the motor, or the machine that was my brain was going to overheat and explode. I started pacing, fast. "Maybe I can talk some sense into Angela, maybe you're wrong and they'll get it."

My voice had hitched up an octave and seemed stuck on full volume, sounding like a panicked little girl, gesturing wildly with my hands and walking back and forth across the room. 

Nico folded his fingers around my wrists, holding me still in front of him. I squirmed, tapping one foot frantically. In comparison with mine, his voice was extra calm and quiet. "Kate. We've already talked about this, remember? Percy might get it, but there's no way we're getting him away from them, and we don't know that he wouldn't tell them anyway."

I looked at the floor.

Nico reached and tipped up my chin, to look him in the eyes. That last breath didn't seem to manage its way out of my chest. "We just need to lay low for a while, okay? Stay safe, think of a way out."

I waited for him to stop touching my face, so I could breathe again. He just studied my eyes for another moment, then squeezed my shoulder with his other hand. "Get some rest. I'll keep any eye out."

I just nodded, grabbed a change of clothes from my duffel bag and went to the bathroom to change. 

When I came out, Nico was sitting on the couch with a map. He watched me climb between the covers of the bed with a special concerned look on his face. 

I closed my eyes against that worry in his eyes. Behind my eyelids, I could almost feel my thoughts racing, new ideas spinning through my mind. I latched onto one, and squeezed my eyes shut, willing myself to fall asleep. It was almost like I pushed down another dam, a wall between me and the exhaustion that had been building up behind my skin. The wave of sleepiness was a tsunami, and it knocked me over before I could gather the rest of my thoughts.


	26. Chapter 26

As soon as I opened my eyes into the new dream, I called out, "hey, Apollo!"

It took a moment, but the sun god materialized in front of me. He crossed his arms and fidgeted, looking a little uncomfortable and a little pissed off. "Just so you know, gods aren't very accustomed to being summoned by demigods."

I shrugged. "I'm not technically a demigod, though, right?"

Apollo raised an eyebrow, looking more than usual like he wanted to hurl me into the sun.

"Sorry. I need a favor, O All-Powerful God of the Sun and All Other Things Awesome."

"Are you-- mocking me now?"

Apollo didn't really look angry anymore, just genuinely confused, but I dialed back the   
sarcasm anyway. "Can you patch me through to Percy Jackson?"

"The legendary demigod who's currently hunting you down? Mind if I ask why?"

I looked at Nico sitting watch on the couch, and thought about the conversation we'd just had. "I get the feeling he'll understand what we need to do. Maybe he'll help us out."

The sun god frowned. "I wouldn't bet on that. But lucky for you, I can help. Give me a second."

A moment passed, then everything around me went blurry. I got a rushing feeling, like I'd been picked up by a giant invisible hand and was being whisked somewhere at top speeds.

I was set down in the middle of a motel room remarkably similar to mine and Nico's. Annabeth and George were sitting in the room, sharpening weapons, watching the door, and looking generally like teenage protagonists in a training montage. In the other room I could just see Percy asleep on his stomach in one of the beds.

It was a little disconcerting watching Annabeth look through me, but I was used to it by now. I marched over to Percy and tapped him on the shoulder.

He shifted, then woke up. His eyes took a second to focus on me, then he stared.

"Hi," I said lamely.

"You're that girl we're looking for." It took him a second to think of the name. "Kate."

I nodded.

His eyes went wide, then he called to the other room. "Guys!"

Annabeth and Georeg kept being teen heroes, not acknowledging their friend.

Percy looked at me. "Am I dead?"

I couldn't help laughing at him. "You're just asleep," I said. "I asked Apollo to help me out so I could talk to you."

He looked confused for a moment, then nodded. "The dream thing. Right."

He looked again at Annabeth, then back at me. "So, what did you need to talk to me about?"

I sat down on the edge of the bed, frowning. I just realized I hadn't thought of what to say.

I looked at Percy. "Is it true that the gods tried to kill you?"

He frowned at the strange question, but nodded. "A few times. Some of them stuck up for me, though. Why?"

I bit my lip. "Do you know why Dionysus sent you guys to look for me?"

Percy literally scratched his head. "Unauthorized quest?"

I frowned "Is that usually enough for five of the camp's best to take off at Olympian-aided speed?"

Percy groaned, rubbing his hands across his face. "You should so be having this conversation with Annabeth."

My eyes widened. "No! You can't tell her anything."

"Why not?"

I looked at the floor and let out a bitter laugh. "Let's just say I don't really have that many people to stick up for me."

Percy looked at me for a long time. "Are you guys in trouble?"

I still didn't look at him. "And let's just say that you're not the only one who should never have been born."

I gave Percy the shortest version I could come up with: how Apollo was helping me out because I was the daughter of both an Apollo demigod and the goddess of Hecate--

"Who's that?" Percy interrupted.

"The goddess of magic."

He shivered. "Right. Building her cabin almost got us all turned into trees."

I frowned, but didn't question him. "Anyway, if Dionysus tracks me down, there's a good chance I'll be taken to Olympus and ceremoniously incinerated for having the audacity to be born."

I was careful to leave out the parts about mind control and teleporting, and the part where I felt like I could explode at any moment.

Percy looked worried, when you ignored the (admittedly kind of cute) confused look I now suspected he wore all the time. "What am I supposed to do?"

I shrugged. "Stall? Take a wrong turn once in a while?"

Percy opened his mouth to answer, but I heard a blaring noise, like a fire alarm had started ringing. It felt loud, but sounded muffled, as though I was hearing it from far away.

Percy sat up straighter, looking around. I did the same, and then stared at him. Something was wrong.

To his credit, Percy figured it out just a beat after I did. His eyes went wide. "You can hear that?"

I willed myself to wake up. Annabeth was moving around in the other room, and all of a sudden I could see a transparent Nico standing up and heading toward the door. The room Nico was in was almost an echo of this one, with the same beds, the same coffeemaker, the same crappy abstract art on the wall...

I sat up straight in the bed, staring wildly at Nico. "We're in the same motel."


End file.
